The general director of Electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, engineer Lázaro Guerra Hernández, warned this Saturday that power outages in Cuba will reach 2,165 MW during the nighttime peak, a figure nearly identical to that recorded on Friday, when the maximum impact reached 2,149 MW.
Guerra Hernández provided the update from the National Cargo Office, during the usual morning contact with Canal Caribe, where he detailed that the system has only 1,015 MW of availability against a forecasted maximum demand of 3,150 MW.
"We are forecasting 1,600 MW for the peak demand of the system at noon today, with 1,015 MW of availability against a predicted maximum demand of 3,150 MW, resulting in an impact of 2,165 MW," the official specified.
At dawn this Saturday, shortly after 7:30 AM, the impact was already around 1,800 MW, as reported by journalist Bernardo Espinosa from the same office.
The outlook for the day is bleak: three generating units are out of service, and five others are undergoing scheduled maintenance. "There are no additional generating units coming online today," confirmed Guerra Hernández.
The only positive expectation revolves around the CTE Antonio Guiteras, the largest generating plant in the country, which this Saturday marks its 16th breakdown of the year.
The repair work on the boiler was nearing completion in the morning, with a hydraulic test in progress.
However, the entire process—approximately five to six hours of checks followed by about eight hours of startup—prevents the unit from being available for the peak hours this Saturday night. The plan is for Guiteras to return to base generation this Sunday, provided that the tests are satisfactory.
In the same communication, engineer Rubén Campos Olmos, general director of the Electric Union, addressed another critical aspect of the system: the transformers.
He explained that the country operates with over 185,000 of these devices and that national manufacturing capacity reaches about 70 units per day, distributed among plants in Havana, Santa Clara, and Manzanillo.
Nonetheless, he openly acknowledged the deficiencies: "We are fully aware of these issues that are arising and we will work in coordination with all the provinces to recover that deficit of transformers until we reach a timeframe that we could consider reasonable."
Campos Olmos also explained a phenomenon that exacerbates the deterioration: when a circuit goes without electricity for many hours and service is restored, the accumulated demand can exceed the transformer's capacity and damage it.
Additionally, equipment over 75 KVA is not manufactured in Cuba and must be refurbished or imported, with significant limitations in both options.
The director of the Electric Union also warned about the theft of dielectric oil from transformers, a crime classified as sabotage.
"When there is a depletion of that liquid, the transformer often gets damaged, but it immediately goes out of service because it needs it," he warned, pointing out that downstream of each affected unit, hospitals, production centers, and entire communities can be left without electricity.
This journey comes just two days after Cuba recorded the historic all-time electrical deficit: 2,208 MW on June 25 at 8:50 PM, surpassing the previous record of 2,174 MW from May 14.
Communities in Matanzas faced up to 85 consecutive hours without electricity during that day.
The crisis has structural roots that have deepened in 2026: 106 distributed generation plants remain idle due to a lack of diesel, which represents 890 MW lost in the system, while strategic facilities inactive due to a lack of fuel add another 1,203 MW unavailable.
Experts estimate that restoring the Cuban electrical system would require between 8 billion and 10 billion dollars and between three to five years of work.
Filed under: