Havana, June 23 (EFE).- Blackouts will affect nearly 10% of Cuba during the time of highest energy consumption – the afternoon and evening, the state company Unión Eléctrica (UNE) reported this Sunday.
This week has ended with a low rate of outages in the electrical service, after in May and the first weeks of June the blackouts worsened with effects that exceeded 10 hours a day in several provinces of the country.
The UNE – belonging to the Ministry of Energy and Mines – foresees for this day a maximum generation capacity of 2,595 megawatts (MW) for a demand of 2,750 MW.
The deficit – the difference between supply and demand – will be 155 MW and the impact – the circuits that will actually be disconnected – will reach 225 MW in the so-called “peak time”, the time of highest consumption.
The Government announced that blackouts must decrease this month to a daily average of “less than three hours per user”, and may even not occur on some days.
The main causes of electricity supply interruptions, according to the UNE, are breakages and failures in thermoelectric plants, lack of fuel and scheduled maintenance.
On this date there are three generating units out of service due to breakdown and one is undergoing maintenance, while 39 plants and one floating unit are not generating due to lack of fuel.
The National Electroenergy System (SEN) is in a very precarious state due to the lack of imported fuel and the recurring breakdowns in the thermoelectric plants, obsolete due to their more than four decades of use and the lack of investments and maintenance.
In the last six years, the Cuban Government has rented up to seven floating power plants (of which currently only five remain) to alleviate the lack of generation capacity, a quick but temporary, polluting and expensive solution.
The frequent cuts in the electricity supply damage the economy – which in 2023 contracted between 1 and 2% – and fuel social discontent in a society already seriously affected by an economic crisis for four years.
They have also been the trigger for the anti-government protests in recent years, including those on July 11, 2021 – the largest in decades – and those on March 17 in Santiago de Cuba (east) and other locations. EFE
rmo/afcu
