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Cuba woke up this Sunday to a new day of severe blackouts, in what has become a routine with no solution in sight for millions of Cubans.
According to the official informative note from the Electric Union, at 06:00 hours, the availability of the National Electric System was only 1,100 MW compared to a demand of 2,750 MW, with 1,670 MW affected since the early morning.
On Saturday, the situation was equally critical: the service was interrupted due to capacity deficits for 24 hours, including the entire early morning period, and the maximum impact reached 1,991 MW at 10:00 PM, worsened by the emergency shutdown of unit four at the CTE Cienfuegos.
For this Sunday, the Electric Union estimates that during the midday period, the impact will be 1,600 MW, and that during the nighttime peak, availability will reach only 1,140 MW against a maximum demand of 3,100 MW, resulting in a deficit of 1,960 MW and a projected impact of 1,990 MW for that time.
Among the main incidents of the day are breakdowns in Unit 1 of the CTE Ernesto Guevara De La Serna, the unit of the CTE Antonio Guiteras, Unit 2 of the CTE Lidio Ramón Pérez, and Units 3 and 5 of the CTE Antonio Maceo.
In addition, Unit five of the CTE Mariel, Unit six of the CTE Renté, and Unit five of the CTE Nuevitas are undergoing maintenance, while the limitations in thermal generation total 341 MW out of service.
As the only partial relief, the Electric Union expects the completion of unit two of the Santa Cruz Thermoelectric Plant with just 40 MW additional for peak hours, a figure insignificant compared to the projected deficit.
The 54 solar photovoltaic parks generated 3,804 MWh on Saturday, with a peak power of 501 MW at noon. However, their contribution drops to zero during the night, precisely when demand peaks and the worst outages occur.
This Sunday marks what has been the darkest May of the year: on May 13, a record deficit of 2,153 MW was recorded, and three days later, the impact reached 2,041 MW, leaving 51% of the country without electricity simultaneously.
The CTE Antonio Guiteras, the largest thermoelectric plant in the country with 38 years of operation without major maintenance, recorded its ninth breakdown of the year on May 14 and remains out of service this Sunday.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, publicly acknowledged that the situation is "so acute, critical" and that in Havana, power cuts exceeded 20 to 22 hours daily, far from the promise he made in December 2025 of a "slightly better situation in the stability of the SEN" for this year.
The crisis has triggered a wave of protests: the Cuban Conflict Observatory reported 1,245 protests in March and 1,133 in April 2026, with pan banging, barricades, and bonfires in at least 12 municipalities in Havana in May, representing the largest wave of social unrest since July 11, 2021.
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