The Electric Company of Cienfuegos acknowledged this Wednesday that some circuits in the province had accumulated between 70 and 89 continuous hours without electricity. However, a resident of the municipality of Cumanayagua commented on that same publication on Facebook with an even harsher figure: "c85 Cumanayagua 92 hours and counting."
The official statement from the state entity began with a direct warning: "Today, it will not be possible to carry out the scheduled rotation of electrical service disruptions planned for the city of Cienfuegos."
The company explained that, once circuits 18 and 20—identified as backups for hospitals—were affected, service would be rerouted to other circuits in the province, resulting in outages lasting between 70 and 89 hours. They attributed the situation to "the low generation availability in the country and the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras thermal power plant." No date for normalization was provided.
"Nothing scares me, nothing covers me with terror; I am astonished when I have been living as a human for several hours," and "the municipalities aren't even mentioned; we have been forgotten by the Cienfuegos Electric Company," commented Cubans to the Cienfuegos Electric Company.
Beyond the widespread outrage, some comments provided specific information about the service distribution. Two users specifically mentioned circuit 5 and questioned whether the rotation had any real effect in their area.
One wrote: "I don’t know what the famous rotation is because we’ve been stuck in the same situation with CIRCUIT 5 for over 15 days. How much longer will this go on?" Another was more direct: "Always the same, no power for over 20 hours in circuit 5."
The unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant —the largest generating facility in the country, with a nominal capacity of 316 MW, located in Matanzas— also received its share of irony. "Oh God, the Guiteras, after all these years, still loves to go out for a stroll," wrote a resident. The plant recorded its fifth malfunction in October on Tuesday and it was estimated that it would remain offline for about four days.
A citizen also raised a broader question: “Will there be a limit on the breakdowns of the thermoelectric plants that have been under repair for almost five years, and we are still in the same situation?”
This Wednesday, the Electric Union projected a maximum impact of 2,045 MW nationwide, with only 885 MW available against an estimated demand of 2,900 MW. Prolonged blackouts in the circuits of Cienfuegos are not an isolated case: in Holguín, the Maceo circuit had accumulated over 42 hours without service by the end of Tuesday; in Contramaestre, Santiago de Cuba, outages of up to 40 hours were reported days earlier. The National Electrical System has suffered at least eight total collapses during 2026, the most recent occurring on September 18.
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