The Minister of Energy and Mines of Cuba, Vicente de la O Levy, responded this Monday to the seventh total disconnection of the National Electric System (SEN) with a «message of resistance» published on his social media: «We continue to move forward in restoring our Electric System, overcoming all types of difficulties, with a total energy blockade, with great effort and commitment».
The "optimistic" statement from the head of the ministry comes at one of the worst moments of the year for the Cuban electrical system: while the country was trying to recover from the sixth total blackout of the year —recorded on Sunday at 10:43 PM—a frequency fluctuation once again knocked out the national electrical system on Monday afternoon, leaving millions of Cubans in the dark once more.
This type of oscillation occurs when there is a sudden disruption of the balance between electrical generation and demand. In a weakened system with insufficient reserve, frequency variation can trigger the protections of units and lines, leading to successive disconnections that can result in total collapse.
The Electric Union (UNE) attributed this seventh disconnection to adverse weather conditions.
"In the process of restoring the SEN, the existing weather events caused damage to the network, directly affecting the generating units that were online," the state-owned company stated in a communication published on Facebook.
The recovery before the new collapse was extremely fragile. Havana woke up this Monday with only 14% of the electrical supply restored: 87,480 customers and 78.51 MW, with 12 substations and 29 energized circuits, prioritizing 19 hospitals and two water pumps.
In that context of minimal recovery, the Antonio Guiteras power plant had begun a cold start at 10:17 in the morning, with the expectation of synchronizing to the national electrical grid by nightfall.
The electrical crisis also affected telecommunications. The Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) announced service disruptions for cellular phone service nationwide following the breakdown of the generator supporting one of its main centers, impacting the prefixes 52, 509, 598, and 599.
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