Cuba began restoring its power system on Sunday, a day after a nationwide grid-wide collapse left millions of people in the dark for the third time this month.
About 72,000 customers in the capital, including five hospitals, had electricity again as of early Sunday, according to a report from the state-run Electric Union and the Ministry of Energy and Mines, but that is just a fraction of Havana’s total population of roughly 2 million.
In Havana and provinces such as Matanzas in the west and Holguín in the east, local energy microsystems have been set up to supply the most vital centers. Residents in some areas of the capital told the Associated Press that power returned during the early hours of the morning.
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Another reason Cuba has struggled with dwindling oil is the U.S. government’s removal of Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, which halted critical oil shipments from the nation that was a staunch ally of Havana.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the island has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel needed to power its economy.
The Cuban Electrical Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, reported that the total disconnection of the national energy system was caused by an unexpected stoppage of a generation unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camaguey province, without providing details on the specific cause of the failure.
Saturday’s outage was the second in the last week and the third in March.
The authorities and Díaz-Canel himself recognized the seriousness of the current energy situation. Cuban Deputy Minister of Energy and Mines, Algelio Abad Vigo, explained this week that the country has not received supplies of diesel, fuel oil, gasoline, aviation fuel or liquefied petroleum gas for three months – all vital for the economy and energy generation.
Vehicle fuel sales are rationed, airlines have suspended flights or reduced frequencies and many workplaces have cut hours.
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US President Donald Trump has suggested for months that Cuba’s government is on the brink of collapse. After a previous time when Cuba’s power grid collapsed, Trump told reporters he believed he would soon have “the honor of taking Cuba.”
*Source: Associated Press.
