Cuba suffered a common blackout on Friday brought on by a crash of its nationwide electrical energy grid, officers mentioned, the fourth main energy outage on the cash-strapped communist island in 5 months.
“At round 8:15 pm tonight, a breakdown… prompted the numerous lack of energy in western Cuba and with it the autumn of the nationwide electrical energy system,” the Ministry of Power and Mines mentioned.
Writing on the social community X, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz mentioned the federal government was “working tirelessly” to revive energy.
In by now acquainted scenes, the streets of Havana had been plunged into darkness.
Just a few inns and personal companies with mills nonetheless had lights on, as did important providers similar to hospitals.
Angelica Caridad Martinez, a resident of the central metropolis of Camaguey, mentioned she was about to take a seat down for dinner when the ability failed.
“I am not even hungry anymore,” the 50-year-old instructed AFP. “This case is unsustainable, nobody can dwell like this.”
Andres Lopez, a 67-year-old resident of the japanese province of Holguin, mentioned he had not been anticipating yet one more blackout so quickly.
“It actually bugs me,” he mentioned. “Let’s examine once they get it (the ability) again on.”
The island of 9.7 million inhabitants has suffered three nationwide blackouts within the closing months of 2024, two of them lasting a number of days.
The repeated outages comes because the island battles its worst financial disaster in 30 years, marked by widespread shortages of meals, medication and gas, excessive inflation and a large outflow of migrants, principally certain for the US.
Friday night time marked the primary common blackout of 2025, however residents face nearly each day outages of 4 or 5 hours throughout a lot of Havana, whereas in rural provinces the intervals with out energy can final 20 hours or longer.
Cuba’s eight thermal energy crops, almost all of which got here on-line within the Nineteen Eighties or Nineties, endure routine failures.
And the Turkish floating energy barges that assist increase Cuba’s nationwide grid are fed with costly imported gas which is commonly briefly provide.
In mid-October, a breakdown on the Guiteras plant, Cuba’s largest, left the island with out energy for 4 days.
The identical facility suffered one other breakdown that took down the grid in December.
A month earlier, Hurricane Rafael had additionally knocked out energy to the whole nation.
Cuba’s management blames a six-decade-long US commerce embargo that intensified throughout Donald Trump’s first presidency for its difficulties in preserving the lights on.
To make up its electrical energy shortfall, Cuba is racing to put in a collection of at the least 55 photo voltaic farms with Chinese language expertise by the top of this 12 months.
Based on authorities, these services will generate some 1,200 megawatts of energy, about 12 % of the nationwide whole.
AFP
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