Havana, Cuba is once again experiencing long blackouts due to breakdowns in five of the eight thermoelectric plants on the island, and amid the high temperatures at this time of year.
The heat at the end of summer increases the demand for electricity, which has left millions of residents helpless in the heat due to recurrent power outages.
State-run Unión Eléctrica said this week that the breakdowns had forced the halting of five power plants on the grid, which need replacing after decades of use. On Friday it promised relief for the weekend, with temperatures forecast at 35 degrees Celsius.
For today there will be 2,175 megawatts (MW) of availability for the peak demand hour of 3,350 MW
in the country, Lázaro Guerra, director general of electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said in his daily report on state television.
Residents of Matanzas, the capital of the province of the same name and neighbouring Havana, live more hours without electricity than with it.
The Electric Union reported on Wednesday in that province that as a result of the growing energy deficit Electricity will be provided for approximately two hours, depending on demand behavior, and will be turned off for six to eight hours.
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This is how it works, especially during the day, at night it may be less, but, in the midst of this great heat, a blackout is unbearable at any time.
“The power supply was not working,” Ismael Garcia, a 35-year-old driver who lives in this town of 162,000 inhabitants, told AFP. Only the Varadero beach resort and other institutions such as hospitals had electricity, Reuters found.
Guerra had announced on Thursday that there would be a situation complex
throughout the country until Saturday, when We must have an improvement
for the recovery of some of the damaged plants.
The latest round of blackouts, a recurring phenomenon in Cuba for several years, is due to failures in three thermoelectric plants located in the west and center of the country, as well as in two others in the east of the island.
There is a sudden silence. It is daytime, so the signs of the blackout do not come through the lack of lighting, but through the absence of sound. A deep emptiness that we all know what it means: the light has gone out.
wrote independent journalist Yoani Sánchez on Thursday in a report describing her own experience in the heart of Vedado, a central Havana neighborhood.