Related videos:
The National Electroenergy System (SEN) of Cuba was linked this morning from Pinar del Río to Holguín, as confirmed by Unión Eléctrica at 11:15 AM this Tuesday.
"Progress was made throughout the night: The system has been linked from Pinar del Río to Holguín. The Unit 8 of the Mariel CTE, the Antonio Guiteras CTE, and Unit 3 of Cespedes are in the process of starting up," noted UNE on Facebook.
"The Felton CTE Substation has power to put the Unit into service in the coming hours. We continue in the recovery process," the state-owned company added.
The announcement was confirmed on X by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, following the total collapse that left the country completely in the dark this Monday, March 16.
However, the recovery is partial.
The provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, and Granma remain disconnected and operate solely on local micro electric systems of independent generation, as specified by the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
Cause of the new collapse?
What caused the general blackout in Cuba on Monday remains officially unexplained.
The General Director of Electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Lázaro Guerra Hernández, acknowledged this Tuesday that the causes of the nationwide blackout are still unknown, and pointed out that no failures were reported in the generating units that were operating at the time of the system failure.
Before the collapse, the system was already operating at its limit. At 6:00 AM on Monday, the availability was only 1,140 MW compared to a demand of 2,347 MW, with 1,220 MW already affected.
For peak hours, a deficit of 1,930 MW was calculated. The 52 photovoltaic solar parks in the country provided 4,262 MWh with a maximum power of 732 MW, a figure insufficient to sustain the system. The highest impact recorded on Monday was 1,891 MW at 7:20 PM.
The power outage also caused a massive drop in Internet in Cuba: according to data from Cloudflare, Cuba lost 65% of its data traffic during the collapse.
The United States Embassy in Havana issued a security alert due to the general blackout.
This collapse is the fifth or sixth nationwide crisis that Cuba has experienced in the last 12 to 18 months.
The most recent incident occurred just on March 4, when a failure at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant —the largest power plant in the country, located in Matanzas— disconnected the system from Camagüey to Pinar del Río, affecting nearly 80% of the country and about 7 million people.
Previously, on October 18, 2024, another widespread blackout caused by the Guiteras left the country without electricity, and by October 20, only 11% of the demand had been restored.
The crisis is a result of decades of neglect of the energy infrastructure: thermoelectric plants that have been in use for over 40 years, a chronic fuel deficit, and generation capacity that falls far short of actual demand.
The minister Vicente de la O Levy had , albeit "slightly better" than the previous year.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Filed under: