Cienfuegos/The electric union provides for this Wednesday a record deficit of 1,870 megawatts (MW). The last time the authorities announced a similar figure – in October last year – the country soon dive into the total blackout. The heat is around 31 and the tension is maximum in a country where some areas have already been without current for more than 25 hours. And they keep counting.
In Cienfuegos, one of the cities most affected by the Corte It will not arrive in time to prepare lunch.
Most private businesses did not open their doors. The city is paralyzed by the blackout and telegram channel of the electricity company in the province has not given the slightest hope: “At the moment due to the situation that the country is going through, the hours of affectation increase to 25 and 3 hours with service ”. Between those two disproportionate numbers the life of many Cienfuegueros oscillates, whose routine has been radically upset by the debacle.
“You accumulate tasks to do, because everything is currently digital and without current you cannot work”
“You have nothing to do all day,” he explains to 14ymedio Jorge, a student from the University of Cienfuegos to whom the energy situation complicates the start of the semester. “You accumulate tasks to do, because everything is currently digital and without current you cannot work.”
Frustrated, on Tuesday he tried to find “refuge” in one of the hotels of the Historic Center of the city, which did have a current generated by a plant. “In order to be there, it was necessary to consume. The prices were for the skies: 200 pesos a coffee, 300 a lemonade, 500 a bleeding. Even to finish a job you have to pay in this country, ”he laments.
In the head of the neighboring province, Villa Clara, the intermittences of electricity are a nightmare. “He left at 4:00 am and came at 7:00,” says Diana, a housewife who lives near Vidal Park. “Then he went again and we are still in a blackout. Yesterday miraculously there was current all day in my circuit, but they were removed. Today they announce more than 1,800 MW. Is it that the total blackout comes again. ”
Neither the Government nor the Minister of Energy and Mines have given alarm signs. At 7:30 am on Wednesday, Félix Estrada, director of the National Cargo Office, appeared against Cuban television to inform that UNE faces a “very complex” panorama and that the 1970 deficit is “quite large.”
Felton’s recovery will take “seven days of cooling to detect the failure”
The “unforeseen” exit – the adjective to use, despite the obvious instability of the centrals – this Tuesday of Unit 1 of the Felton thermoelectric plant, in Holguín, decompensated for the umpteenth time the national electrical system (SEN). The sequence of the total blackout in October is repeated: on that occasion the fall of another central, Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas, was the one that dragged the entire system.
The felton’s recovery will take “seven days of cooling to detect the ruling,” said the manager. In total, according to the daily part of the Electric Union, it is estimated that the repair will take 20 days to be completed. Estrada explained that there are also several units out of service in the Centrals of Santa Cruz (Mayabeque) and Renté (Santiago de Cuba).
This Wednesday’s data does not have the same in the last two years. It is a record before which government silence is disconcerting. Havana has encrypted its hopes – at least officially – in the solar panels that China intends to install the wholesale throughout the island.
At the foot of official publications, both in the press and in the social media profiles of the UNE, the disgust is no longer disguised. “Inhuman everything. There is no note what is happening. Children, elderly without eating, without being able to hit an eye waiting for the current to make the buchito of food and nothing, denigrating, ”said user Maidelis Bencomo.
“The only thing those numbers and the situation tell me,” added the user Daniel González, “is that we are on the edge of another general blackout, 1,800 MW of deficit, that says everything and with the situation that exists with the generation we will pass minimal A week without electricity. Shame and abuse with the people.
Finally, the user Dayron Lavin mocked: “We are two steps from reaching 2,000 [MW de déficit]. I run to see the president of the CDR and the rest of the ‘factors’ of the neighborhood to prepare the activity … Congratulations, UNE. Strength, Cuba. ”
