HAVANA.- This week the blackouts in Cuba despite the fact that the Electrical Union (UNE) had predicted an improvement; However, last Wednesday the inhabitants of the island suffered the consequences of a prolonged outage that lasted from approximately 10:30 in the morning until early Thursday morning, due to a higher than expected energy deficit.
The UNE admitted that of the 342 MW that had been forecast, the deficit rose to 766 MW; while on Thursday it was 710MW.
“Deficit higher than planned due to non-entry of units 5 of the CTE Mariel, unit 2 of the CTE Santa Cruz and departure of unit 5 of the CTE Rente,” UNE said on its Facebook profile.
That day, the electricity outages They occurred from 10:20 am to 1:57 am on Thursday. In many locations, service was intermittent. Then, on Thursday the power went out again at 6:30 am.
In total, unit 5 of the Mariel CTE, unit 2 of the Santa Cruz CTE, unit 5 of the Nuevitas CTE and unit 2 of the Felton CTE are out of service due to a breakdown; Unit 1 of the CTE Santa Cruz is inactive due to lack of maintenance.
The limitations on thermal generation are 476 WW. According to the UNE, 61 distributed generation plants, the Regla plant and the Melones plant, were also out of service due to fuel, for a total of 579 MW affected.
“Those blackouts are here to stay”
In addition to the hardships due to food shortages, the high cost of what is available, the lack of water, among others, Cubans have to deal with blackouts.
“Those blackouts are here to stay. “People are going crazy without food, without power,” said Teresa Miranda Céspedes, from Mayarí, and stressed that the situation is “unbearable.”
Martha Rodríguez, in Artemisa, said it was “more than 12 hours of blackout.” “Couldn’t make food,” she complained.
Leydis Tabares, from Camagüey, said that the food he keeps in the refrigerator began to decompose. “Twelve hours passed me yesterday and today I have been up since 4 in the morning trying to cook and wash so that what happened to me yesterday does not happen to me. Even the sausages are going bad because it’s so hot… you can imagine,” she said.
Other people report that the electrical service is intermittent. “They put it on you for a while and then they take it away again. The people scream, because it is a very difficult situation,” denounced Alfredo Álvarez Leyva, from Sagua de Tánamo.
In Santiago de Cuba the situation is similar. “He left at 11, came at 6 and left at 7, and came at one in the morning. He is a criminal,” said Daniel García, in Palma Soriano.
The electrical crisis joins the health chaos in Matanzas. The activist Annia Zamora Carmenate has not yet been able to recover from the Oropouche virus. She indicated that the viral outbreak is worsened by heat, blackouts and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
“Yesterday there were more than 10 hours (of blackout). We continue to be a garbage dump, there is no fumigation, there is nothing, but the saddest and most painful thing is that, for example, last night my six-year-old grandson had a seizure. Now I have my grandson in the Jovellanos Hospital and it is full of children with vomiting, diarrhea and very high fevers, and I go around like crazy looking for all the medicines, because there is nothing,” he said.
Residents in several Cuban provinces described to Martí Noticias the scenario they have suffered in recent hours with the intensification of power outages.
“Almost the entire day; At 11 in the morning they turned off the power, turned it on at 4 in the afternoon and at 5 they turned it off again. They returned her at around 8 pm, she left again, then she came back around 10 pm. Then, in the early morning, they turned off the power again,” said independent journalist Guillermo del Sol from the city of Santa Clara.
Unkept promises
Last May, the general director of the UNE, Alfredo López Valdés, assured that blackouts would begin to decrease after a series of maintenance work on the thermoelectric plants.
“When we get to July we will not have planned maintenance, although we will have the breakdowns that normally occur in the system,” he said. And he emphasized that “we cannot commit to no blackouts. Due to the current conditions of the system, that commitment is not possible now.”
However, he said they would work to ensure that the blackouts were not prolonged.
“We are going to fight every day, we are going to fight every day, we are going to work every day so that there are no prolonged blackouts, so that they are not long-lasting, as we have been able to achieve at other times,” he said.
For his part, Miguel Díaz-Canel transferred the responsibility to the population by asking them for “conscious savings” to “overcome this situation.”
Source: With information from martinoticias.com / diodecuba.com
