Only three percent of customers in Havana have electricity following the disconnection from the National Electric System

Only 30,277 of the 862,732 customers of the Electric Company of Havana, equivalent to 3% of the total, had electricity by the evening of this Friday, following the eighth total disconnection of the National Electroenergetic System (SEN) this year, which occurred just before 2:00 PM.

According to the report, published on the official Granma newspaper's Facebook page, only four of the 26 substations in the capital are in service, while only 10 of the 286 distribution circuits are operational.

The source indicated that "the restoration is being carried out gradually as the conditions of the SEN allow," but no timeline was provided for the complete recovery of the service.

The report also warned that some customers may remain without electricity even after their circuit is restored, due to other reasons unrelated to the general outage.

According to the official explanation, the collapse on Friday was triggered by the successive failure of two high-voltage transmission lines originating from Matanzas, first the 220 kV Matanzas-Cienfuegos line and then the Matanzas-Santa Clara line, amid unstable weather conditions.

The sequence was rapid: the initial failure split the system into two blocks - Western zone and Eastern zone - and minutes later, there was a total blackout. The UNE confirmed the disconnection from Pinar del Río to Matanzas at 1:52 PM, and from Matanzas to Guantánamo five minutes later.

The system was already operating at its limit before the collapse, as it had only 1,113 MW of available generation against a projected demand of 3,210 MW, with a maximum forecasted shortfall of 2,007 MW.

Previous recoveries in Havana present a grim outlook considering that after the fifth total disconnection of the SEN in July, the capital reached only four percent service in the first hours; following the sixth, it barely reached 14% the next day.

Authorities reported that they will keep the population updated through their official channels, the Telephone Assistance Center (18888), and the Command Post established for the current electrical situation.