Havana/Neither the optimistic tone nor the efforts to appear calm by Bernardo Espinosa – the government journalist in charge of presenting the daily report of the blackouts – manage to hide the magnitude of the crisis. This Saturday, Cuba will face power outages throughout the day that will simultaneously affect up to 63% of the country at the time of greatest demand, the highest percentage recorded so far.
Although the Island has suffered massive blackouts and abrupt system crashes on other occasions, the figure announced by the state company Unión Eléctrica (UNE) marks a record within the scheme of programmed damages. This is the second maximum documented so far in January, since just ten days ago an impact of 62% was expected. It is also the worst data since 2022, when official figures on power outages began to be systematically released.
Far from an unforeseen collapse, the Government recognizes that more than half of the country will be disconnected in a planned manner, an implicit admission that the energy system loses capacity every day to sustain basic demand and rationing schemes are no longer enough.
Since mid-2024, Cuba has been going through an energy crisis aggravated by frequent breakdowns in its obsolete thermoelectric plants and by the lack of foreign currency to import the fuel necessary for its distributed generation plants. Added to this panorama in recent weeks is the loss of Venezuela as the main source of supplies and the pressures on Mexico, which have ended up narrowing the authorities’ room for maneuver.
The figure announced by the state company Unión Eléctrica marks a record within the scheme of programmed damages
For this Saturday’s peak time – the afternoon-night time slot – the UNE calculates a generation capacity of just 1,160 megawatts (MW), compared to a maximum demand estimated at 3,040 MW. The deficit, the gap between the available energy and the necessary energy, will reach 1,880 MW, while the programmed impact, that is, the amount that will be deliberately disconnected from the system, will reach 1,910 MW.
Behind those figures is an exhausted thermoelectric system. Eight of the 16 operational production units remain out of service due to breakdowns or maintenance. This generation source contributes, under normal conditions, around 40% of the country’s energy mix, so each failure has an immediate impact on the supply.
Espinosa insisted that the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant will only be out of service for an estimated period of 96 hours. However, engineer Félix Estrada, director of the National Cargo Dispatch, was much less confident that the work will be completed within the announced deadline, a caution that reflects the accumulated experience of delays and missed schedules.
In parallel, the UNE has stopped publishing a key piece of information in its daily reports: the number of distributed generation plants – the engines – that are not operating due to lack of fuel or lubricants. The omission prevents a precise measurement of the impact of the end of Venezuelan oil, although the rest of the indicators point to a sustained increase in the number of paralyzed engines to record numbers.
The energy sector has decades of underfinancing, lack of maintenance and lack of structural investment, all in a system controlled by the State since 1959, without transparency or accountability.
The planned blackouts, increasingly extensive and frequent, have a devastating effect on the economy, which has contracted more than 15% since 2020, according to official figures. They have also been a key factor in the social protests of recent years, directly affecting daily life, food production and the operation of basic services.
