This Saturday, Cuba suffered its second national blackout in less than a week. “There has been a total disconnection of the National Electrical System. The protocols for restoration are already beginning to be implemented,” said the Ministry of Energy and Mines on the social network X at 5:45 p.m. (local time).
This is the seventh, that is, the entire island generates zero megawatts, recorded in a year and a half, after the most recent was recorded last Monday.
Resetting the SEN is a slow and laborious procedure that can take days. It means starting to generate energy with simple start-up sources (solar, hydroelectric, generation engines) to serve small areas that are then interconnected. “It is extremely complex,” the general director of Electricity of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Lázaro Guerra, recently warned. This week, the manager clarified before a hundred national and international journalists the extreme situation that affects more than six million Cubans on the island, with blackouts of up to 30 hours, problems with access to water and difficulties in getting to work or getting to medical appointments. “This is the genocidal and inhuman face that seeks to suffocate us. And despite this, we are doing the impossible,” he said.
While the island is seeking to become energy sovereign through solar energy, Guerra warned that the challenges are “titanic.” Currently, 38% of the electricity consumed during the day comes from solar panels, but batteries for nighttime benefit are just a plan. “We have the trained technicians and the machines, but we don’t have the fuel. That is not incompetence, it is the blockade at its finest.” The first things that are usually reestablished in the energy system – based on previous general blackouts – are hospitals (since not all have generators) and water sources.
Araíz Consuegra Otero, director of the Juan Manuel Márquez Pediatric Hospital, recalled just a few hours ago how complex it was to coordinate among everyone in the previous general blackout. Here all minors with oncological and psychiatric diagnoses in the country are cared for. They currently have 141 minors admitted. “The blackouts affect us just like the rest of the Cubans. On nights with a blackout we sleep poorly and then we have to come here to perform 19-hour surgeries and smile at the patients. It’s very hard, but we do it because our task is one: save the children,” she said excitedly. “Blocking a country has sincere and very serious consequences. We are talking about the lives of our children.”
