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The Electric Company of Holguín publicly acknowledged that the residential circuits in the province receive approximately three hours of electricity for every 39 or just over 40 hours of interruption, in a scheme that the general director of the entity, Rubert Reynaldo González, explained on the television channel Telecristal, and a summary of which was on the company's social media.
Holguín is the second province with the most electric customers in Cuba, with 383,180 users, and has a peak demand of 240 MW. However, it is currently operating with only 70 MW available, less than 30% of what is needed.
Of the 70 MW, 26 are allocated to essential services and approximately 20 MW to the nickel industry, leaving only 14 MW to meet a residential demand of 190 MW.
Given this gap, the company applies a "queue" system instead of traditional blackout blocks. "Due to the low availability, it is not possible to plan traditional blocks; instead, a 'queue' system is used where circuits receive approximately 3 hours of service for every 39 or just over 40 hours of interruption," González explained coldly.
There are 18 prioritized circuits that cover 4.04% of customers, aimed at ensuring the operation of strategic hospitals, the eight main water pumping systems, tourism, the airport, and the Felton Thermoelectric Power Plant.
The company also warned about a problem that exacerbates the crisis: when the supply is restored after long periods of outage, the simultaneous connection of equipment and the massive charging of batteries, ecoflows, and motorinas causes overloads that damage the transformers.
"The capacity of the three national workshops is insufficient to meet the demand for repairs, with some cases in the province experiencing over a month of interruptions due to a lack of spare parts," the company stated.
In the moments of greatest risk for the National Electric Power System, the company is forced to shut down even the water pumping circuits in order to fulfill the three hours of service planned for the residential circuits on schedule.
This statement comes days after the Holguín Electric Company itself published and erased a message on Telegram —on June 2— acknowledging the three hours of daily electricity and the prioritization of tourism, which sparked a wave of criticism.
That document, captured before its deletion, revealed that the National Cargo Office assigned 60 MW to Holguín: 35 for vital objectives, three for the tourist hub of Guardalavaca, and only 22 for residential and commercial distribution.
The situation is not new. Since March 2026, the company had already implemented schemes that promised only three hours of electricity per shift. In April, outages reached 18 hours a day, and by the end of May, there were reports of blackouts lasting more than 24 consecutive hours.
The collapse extends throughout Eastern Cuba. The director of the electrical office in Santiago de Cuba, Lester Salvador Cedeño, admitted on May 31 that power outages exceed 20 hours a day: "Often we can't even reach two hours of service."
Nationwide, on May 14, a record deficit of 2,174 MW was recorded, with only 976 MW available against a demand of 3,150 MW. On June 10, Cuba generated less than 1,000 MW, barely one third of what is needed to meet national demand.
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