A new disconnection electric system in central and eastern Cuba it occurred on the afternoon of this Wednesday, according to official sources.
The system outage affects the provinces between Cienfuegos and Guantanamo, and is due to a shot in the 220,000 Volt (220 kV) lines between Matanzas and Villa Clara and Matanzas and Cienfuegos, according to the telecentre CNC from Granma province.
The information ensures that the causes of what happened are investigated.
For its part, the Electric Company of the province of Holguín confirms the lack of electrical service “due to the opening of the central-eastern system”, and affirms that it is working “to create systems on islands in order to guarantee service to vital objectives”.
“When the conditions exist in the National Electroenergetic System, the charges will be replaced according to availability,” the Holguin company informs its clients.
More succinct is the published note a posteriori by the Electrical Union of Cuba (UNE), which only confirms the occurrence of “a failure in the national electrical system.”
“The causes are being investigated. They will be announced in the shortest possible time, “says the brief communication, which, at least in a first approach to the problem, does not advance the possible time for solving the fault.
This Wednesday is the third disconnection of the national electricity system in two days and the fifth in two weeks.
This Tuesday, two failures occurred, a first, shortly after noon, which affected the same territories that are now turned off, and a second, at 5:24 p.m., which caused the electrical system to fall from Ciego de Ávila to Guantánamo.
In both cases, they were due to breakdowns in 220 kV lines, which, according to what the UNE explained, were caused by forest fires.
On February 18, another fault left two-thirds of Cuba without electricity. On that occasion, the UNE attributed the problem to “human error” in the Matanzas 220 kV substation.
And previously, on February 13, another fault in 220 kV high-voltage lines also caused a disconnection in the central-eastern region. The cause reported at the time was “a cane burning.”
These outages in the electrical system occur at a time when blackouts have also returned to the island due to a deficit in generation capacity. This deficit is caused by breakages and maintenance in the island’s generating plants.
For this Wednesday, the UNE had predicted an affectation of 484 MW during the night peak hours.
According to the entity, this morning units 6, 7 and 8 of the Mariel thermoelectric plant, 1 of Santa Cruz, 4 of Nuevitas, 2 of Felton and 3 and 5 of I rented it.
Meanwhile, unit 4 of the Cienfuegos thermoelectric plant, unit 1 of Felton and units 4 and 6 of Renté are receiving maintenance.