An official from the Electric Company of Matanzas confirmed to TV Yumurí what residents have been reporting for months: Matanzas is officially the province with the highest electrical impact in the entire country.
"It is 100% real and the opinion of the people in this case corresponds with reality", asserted Kenny Cruz González, Deputy Technical Director of the Provincial Electric Company, who explained with concrete data why the situation in that province is structurally more severe than in the rest of Cuba.
According to Cruz González, the main reason is the volume of consumption: Matanzas is the second province with the highest electric demand in the country, with an average of 238 MW according to the latest load curve from April 2026.
This high consumption directly translates into a greater disconnection burden when the system is in deficit. "At peak times, we are the province that experiences the most impact in the country: we are talking about 174 MW," the official specified, noting that this is the highest achievable cut across all Cuban provinces.
Matanzas has 123 switchable circuits that accumulate different loads depending on the time of day. Cruz González acknowledged that there are circuits that accumulate over 40 hours of continuous blackout, something that does not happen with the same frequency in other provinces.
"It catches my attention because on several occasions, circuits that go without power for 40 hours, and when one reviews the circuits in other provinces, they are not at that maximum outage level; they do not have that number of hours."
The comparison with other provinces is revealing, as some have implemented rotation systems that allow circuits to remain on for more hours a day, something that Matanzas has not achieved on a widespread basis.
The paradox is that Matanzas houses the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant, the largest in Cuba, with a nominal installed capacity of 320 MW, but it operates at a reduced real capacity, reporting stable deliveries of 220-260 MW. However, that generation feeds into the National Electroenergetic System (SEN) and does not directly benefit the province.
The human consequences of this crisis are severe. Since early 2026, the province has recorded power outages of up to 30 and 48 continuous hours in specific circuits.
In Unión de Reyes, residents protested in March after 45 hours without electricity. The failures in the water pumps led to a health crisis that prompted health authorities to urge boiling and chlorinating the water in response to hepatitis cases.
On a national level, the electricity deficit reached its critical point on April 1, when it hit 1,945 MW, leaving 55% of the territory without power.
Since April 19, Cuba began distributing fuel derived from crude oil donated by Russia —100,000 tons that arrived at the port of Matanzas on March 31 aboard the tanker Anatoly Kolodkin—, allowing for the reactivation of several thermoelectric units and reducing the projected deficit to 1,012 MW for the nighttime peak on April 21, the lowest level since November 2025.
However, this improvement has mainly been felt in Havana, which has gone several consecutive days without blackouts, while Matanzas and the rest of the provinces continue to experience severe outages.
Russian crude only covers between seven and ten days of national consumption and does not address the structural issues stemming from decades of maintenance and investment shortages that are the real cause of the crisis.
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