Cuba's electrical grid is back online but generation still lagged
Cuba announced late Wednesday that it had reconnected the national electrical grid. However, production remained well below demand a day after an outage caused by a power plant knocked millions of people off their electricity.
Cuba's Energy and Mines minister Vicente de la O Levy announced on X on Wednesday that the grid had been restored just before midnight.
The National Electric Union (UNE), however, announced on social media that it was "serving in" 880 MW to the system. This is a fraction of typical peak demand, which is 3,200 MW. This suggests that a significant portion of the Caribbean Island remained without power.
Even when the grid is operational, a majority of Cubans suffer from rolling blackouts lasting several hours.
Cuba's electrical system has been at the edge of collapse for many years. Fuel shortages, natural disasters, and an economic crisis have made the island's administration unable to maintain its decrepit infrastructure.
The system was thrown into crisis by the decline in oil imports this year from Venezuela, Russia, and Mexico. This led to several blackouts across the country, which sparked anger and unrest among the public.
Blackouts and shortages of food, medicine, and water have made life on the island a nightmare and led to a mass exodus since 2020.
Cuba's communist government blames its current crisis on a decades-old U.S. embargo that stymies financial transactions, and makes it difficult to buy fuel and spare parts. (Reporting and editing by Elaine Hardcastle; Dave Sherwood)
(source: Reuters)
