The Electric Union reported this Friday a new total disconnection of the National Electric System, following successive failures that impacted various sections of the Cuban electrical grid.
"A total disconnection of the National Electroenergetic System occurred. The cause is being investigated immediately, and protocols for reestablishment are activated," stated the brief official statement on Facebook, without specifying the exact time of the collapse or its immediate causes.
A second communication, issued at 1:52 PM, reported the disconnection of the SEN from Pinar del Río to Matanzas and indicated that protocols were being applied to restore the system.
Five minutes later, at 13:57, the company reported a new disconnection from Matanzas to Guantánamo. According to the UNE, the cause of this partial outage was the tripping of a section of the 220 kV Matanzas-Cienfuegos line.
The company then indicated that the system was "completely disconnected," after the disruptions affected both segments of the national network.
The communications issued by the company do not specify how long the recovery of the SEN might take.
The blackout report for the day already indicated the severity of the situation, as the system had only 1,113 MW of available generation compared to a projected demand of 3,210 MW, with a maximum forecasted impact of 2,007 MW.
Havana registered 358 MW affected and 117 circuits with interruptions before the total collapse, while Villa Clara reported 142 affected circuits and a capacity deficit of 204 MW.
This new collapse, the eighth of the year, adds to a series of total outages that has shaken the country throughout the year, with a couple in March, three in July, and the remaining two in August.
The seventh disconnection, which occurred on August 3rd, happened during the recovery from the previous blackout, when a frequency fluctuation caused the system to crash again. The restoration took 17 hours and 45 minutes.
After that episode, Minister Vicente de la O Levy insisted that "there have not been operational errors" and attributed the outages to fluctuations in the grid and fuel shortages.
The crisis is due to structural causes that have accumulated over decades, such as obsolete thermal power plants, a lack of capital maintenance, and chronic fuel shortages.
The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the largest in the country, located in Matanzas, has experienced at least 17 unplanned outages this year and has not received major maintenance since 2010, according to the official newspaper Granma.
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