HAVANA — Tens of millions of individuals in Cuba have been left with out electrical energy for 2 days after the nation’s vitality grid went down when of the island’s main energy crops failed. The widespread blackout that swept throughout the county was the worst in years.
Authorities have been capable of restore energy to some individuals by Saturday, nevertheless it was unclear when the ability could be absolutely restored throughout the nation.
Right here are some things to know:
About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday night, adopted by your complete island on Friday morning after the failure of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas Province east of Havana.
Even in a rustic that for many years has been accustomed to frequent outages amid a sequence of financial crises, the grid failure was unprecedented in trendy occasions, other than incidents involving highly effective hurricanes, comparable to one in 2022.
At the same time as Cuba labored to repair the ability issues Saturday, the nation issued hurricane watches for the far jap Guantanamo, Holguin and Las Tunas provinces as a tropical storm developed into Hurricane Oscar, the tenth hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
Authorities stated the outage that started Thursday stemmed from elevated demand from small- and medium-sized corporations and residences’ air conditioners — as many as 100,000 further ones this yr alone. In addition they blamed breakdowns in previous thermoelectric crops that haven’t been correctly maintained due to a scarcity of arduous foreign money as a consequence of U.S. sanctions, in addition to inadequate gasoline to function some services.
Whereas some houses have spent as much as eight hours a day this yr with out electrical energy because the grid has grown extra unstable, the present energy failure is taken into account Cuba’s worst in years.
Officers stated that 1.64 gigawatts went offline throughout peak hours, about half the entire demand on the time. The federal government carried out emergency measures to slash demand, suspended courses, and shut down some state-owned workplaces and canceled non-essential companies.
One other main collapse occurred two years in the past after Hurricane Ian, an intense Class 3 storm, broken energy installations and the federal government took days to repair them.
It is unknown how Cubans will react if the present blackout endures or recurs.
However issues within the electrical grid have helped sparked avenue protests a number of occasions lately, together with massive demonstrations in July 2021 that led to worldwide criticism of the federal government for its harsh response. There have been additionally smaller demonstrations as a consequence of blackouts in October 2022 and March of this yr.
Authorities now say modifications to electrical energy charges for small- and medium-sized corporations, which have proliferated since they have been first licensed by the communist authorities in 2021, are being thought of.
Officers stated the state-owned energy firm UNE was utilizing distributed era to supply energy to some areas of the island and {that a} gas-fired thermoelectric plant was beginning operations.
Cuba will get its energy from enormous thermoelectric crops like Antonio Guiteras and a few smaller ones, which require crude oil to function. The nation produces about half of the crude wanted, however should buy among the relaxation on the worldwide market, which might be tough and expensive as a consequence of U.S. sanctions. It has additionally trusted allies like Venezuela and Russia for cheaper gasoline.
Authorities have been working since final yr on a undertaking to improve the island’s electrical grid via the usage of different energy sources. A undertaking to construct 31 facilities producing photo voltaic vitality is beneath means and projected to be accomplished subsequent yr.
“We’re devoting absolute precedence to addressing and fixing this extremely delicate vitality contingency,” Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X. “There will probably be no relaxation till its restoration.”
____
Comply with AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america