Havana. Millions of Cubans woke up on Sunday without electricity in their homes after another partial failure of the network during the night of Saturday, which deepened the energy crisis that has left with concern to restore public service.
The country’s top electricity official, Lázaro Guerra, confirmed a partial grid collapse in Cuba’s western provinces late Saturday and said technicians were working to resolve the problem.
Guerra did not provide a timeline for when power would be restored to the region, which includes Havana with nearly two million residents who were without power early Sunday.
The state-owned digital news outlet CubaDebate reported that the country’s largest power plant, Antonio Guiteras, returned to service on Sunday and would begin to contribute to the restoration of service later in the day.
A third power grid failure late Saturday dealt a setback to the government’s efforts to quickly restore power to exhausted residents already suffering from severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.
Time continues to pass while the hurricane Oscar was approaching northeastern Cuba early Sunday, threatening to further complicate the government’s plans to restore power supply.
The Cuban meteorological service warned of an “extremely dangerous situation” in eastern Cuba. The region was practically without electricity or communications before the storm, which at mid-morning on Sunday had winds of up to 160 kilometers per hour.
Cuba’s national power grid collapsed for the first time around noon on Friday after a failure at the island’s largest power plant shut down. The network collapsed again on Saturday morning, state media reported.
Early Saturday afternoon, authorities reported some progress in restoring power before announcing another partial collapse.
“The process of restoring the electrical system continues to be complex,” said the Cuban Ministry of Energy in X.
Increase in tensions
Reuters journalists witnessed two small protests overnight after a power grid failure left Havana in darkness, one on the outskirts of the capital in Marianao and the other in the more central Cuatro Caminos.
Several videos of protests elsewhere in the capital began appearing on social media on Saturday night, although Reuters was unable to verify their authenticity.
Internet traffic fell sharply in Cuba on Saturday, according to data from Internet monitoring group NetBlocks, as major power outages made it nearly impossible for most island residents to charge phones and connect to the Internet.
“Network data shows that Cuba remains largely offline as the island experiences a second nationwide power outage,” Netblocks said on Saturday.
Even before the grid failures, a severe power deficit on Friday had forced Cuba’s government to send non-essential state workers home and cancel school classes for children as it sought to conserve fuel for power generation. energy.
The government has attributed weeks of increasingly severe blackouts – up to 10 to 20 hours a day in much of the island – to deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and growing demand.
Cuba also blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as sanctions instituted by then-President Donald Trump, for ongoing difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil plants.
The United States has denied any role in the network failures.
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