Cuba fails to restore electricity, suffers second national blackout after grid collapses

Cuba’s power grid was shut down again early Saturday, leaving the island without power after authorities tried and failed to restore power following a nationwide blackout on Friday.

The island’s state-owned Electric Union reported a second “blackout” at 6:15 a.m., just hours after authorities announced they had restored power to a few “microsystems” across the island.

The entire country lost power for the first time Friday morning after a major power plant outage, just hours after Prime Minister Manuel Marrero warned of an “energy emergency” and blackouts. electricity to come. In a television broadcast Thursday evening, he said the government had “paralyzed” most of the economy to provide minimal electricity to the population.

The Electricity Union did not initially say what caused the second blackout, but officials previously said the process of restoring service should not be rushed.

Later Saturday, Lázaro Guerra, senior director of the Electric Union, said there had been a “failure” that affected part of an electrical “microsystem” in western Cuba that supplies 650 megawatts to other places in the country.

As the day progressed, official Cuban media reported that there had been a “gradual restoration” of electrical service in limited areas of the provinces of Havana, Villa Clara, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Sancti Spiritus to serve the hospitals, water pumps and other essential services. services. But electricity is provided by generators using diesel fuel, Guerra told the official Cubadebate newspaper.

As of Saturday afternoon, power plants across the country were still not connected to the power grid and most of the country was still without electricity.

On Friday evening, officials said they were trying to restart two thermoelectric plants near Havana, located in Mariel and Santa Cruz del Norte. They said another power plant providing electricity to Santiago in eastern Cuba was beginning operations. Guerra said repairs were nearing completion at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western city of Matanzas that initially caused the grid to collapse on Friday.

Many Cuban power plants are obsolete and inefficient; some have been operating for more than 50 years without adequate maintenance. After the country’s electricity grid collapsed during Hurricane Ian in 2022, experts have warned that the government must urgently invest in upgrading the system.

The prime minister said Thursday that the lack of oil had worsened the situation in recent days, causing power cuts of up to 20 hours a day in some areas.

Cuba receives less oil from Venezuela and Russia, its political allies. The country is going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the government lacks money to buy oil on the international market to meet domestic demand. But hardliners within the government have resisted market reforms and foreign investment.

One of the commanders of the old guard, Ramiro Valdés, 92, appeared alongside the country’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, at the headquarters of the Electricity Union in photos shared by the company on social networks .

Díaz-Canel said the outages, resulting from lack of maintenance of power plants and lack of foreign currency to buy oil, were a direct result of the decades-old US embargo – the government’s main reason for the ills of the economy.

A spokesperson for the US State Department objected to the claims, saying that “obviously” the United States “is not responsible for the current power outage on the island or the energy situation global in Cuba.

“As we have seen in recent years, Cuba’s economic situation, resulting from long-term mismanagement of its economic policies and resources, has increased the difficulties of the Cuban people,” the official said. He added that the Biden administration is concerned about the potential humanitarian impacts of the outage on the Cuban people. He also noted that Cuban authorities had not requested assistance from the United States.

Cubans, upset by daily power outages, have defied the country’s draconian laws punishing government critics and left several comments in state media calling for government officials to resign. The second outage will likely exacerbate public frustration as food begins to spoil due to lack of refrigeration.

Compounding the island’s problems, recent Tropical Storm Oscar is expected to hit eastern Cuba on Sunday with rain and winds of up to 80 km/h.

A few images of dark streets and buildings emerged from Cuba on Friday evening, although social media posts were rare as cellphone batteries died. CNN Havana correspondent Patrick Oppmann reported that a handful of Havana hospitals and hotels were running on generators Friday night, and spoke of the “agonizing” experience of driving around the city without traffic lights in working order.

A video circulating on social media showed images of Havana’s José Marti International Airport in darkness, but Cuba’s transport minister said late Friday that the country’s airports were equipped with generators and were in operation.

American Airlines said flights to Cuba were continuing as planned. Cuba Travel, an agency based in Hialeah, said it continues to sell plane tickets to the island.

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(El Nuevo Herald staffer Maykel Gonzalez contributed.)

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