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Cuba wakes up this Monday engulfed in another day of widespread power outages. According to the daily report from the Unión Eléctrica, the National Electric System (SEN) had only 1,160 MW available at 6:00 AM against a demand of 2,689 MW, leaving 1,548 MW already affected since the early morning.
The forecast for the nighttime peak hours is devastating: the state entity projects a demand of 3,100 MW with the same availability of 1,160 MW, resulting in a deficit of 1,940 MW and a projected impact of 1,970 MW, nearly double what the system can supply.
The Electric Union acknowledged that on Sunday, "service was interrupted due to a capacity deficit for 24 hours, and the outage extended throughout the early morning hours." The highest recorded impact was 1,918 MW at 8:40 PM.
The causes of the collapse are broken power plants, nonexistent fuel, and unmaintained equipment. Among the active failures are one unit from the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant, Unit Two from the Ernesto Guevara De La Serna Power Plant, Unit Two from the Lidio Ramón Pérez Power Plant, and Unit Five from the Antonio Maceo Power Plant.
Additionally, Units five of the Mariel CTE, Unit six of the Renté CTE, and Unit five of the Nuevitas CTE are under maintenance. The limitations in thermal generation amount to an additional 383 MW out of service.
There are 106 distributed generation plants offline due to a lack of fuel, equivalent to 890 MW. The Regla and Melones tugs, as well as the fuel plants in Mariel and Moa, are also out of service. "Total unavailable MW due to fuel: 1,203," states the official report.
The 54 solar photovoltaic parks installed by the government generated 2,835 MWh on Sunday, with a peak of 422 MW at noon, but their contribution is negligible during the peak nighttime hours when the crisis worsens.
May broke all negative records of the year. On the 14th, the worst deficit of 2026 was recorded, with 2,174 MW and only 976 MW available, which meant cutting off up to 70% of the island simultaneously.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, confirmed that the oil donated by Russia had been depleted and that there was not enough diesel to sustain the system, with blackouts lasting over 20 hours daily in Havana and a situation that was "much worse" in the interior of the country.
Last Sunday, an executive of the Electric Company in Santiago de Cuba acknowledged that in many cases they could not guarantee even two hours of service, while the CTE Antonio Guiteras went offline at least four times just in May.
Independent estimates suggest that rehabilitating the Cuban electrical system would cost between 8 billion and 10 billion dollars, a figure unattainable for a regime that cannot even afford the fuel necessary to keep its power plants running.
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