What you should know about the power grid failure that plunged Cuba into darkness

HAVANA (AP) — Millions of people in Cuba remained without power for two days after the country’s power grid failed when one of the island’s power grids failed Large power plants failed. The widespread power outage that affected the entire county was the worst in years.

The authorities succeeded Giving power back to some people until Saturday, but it was unclear when power would be fully restored across the country.

Here are a few things you should know:

What happened and why?

About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning following the failure of the Antonio Guiteras thermal power plant in Matanzas province, east of Havana.

Even in a country that has been used to frequent failures for decades amid a series of economic crises, The grid failure was unprecedented in modern times, aside from incidents involving strong hurricanes such as one in 2022.

As Cuba worked to resolve power problems on Saturday, the country issued hurricane warnings for the far eastern provinces of Guantanamo, Holguin and Las Tunas as a tropical storm developed into Hurricane Oscar, the 10th hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.

Authorities said the outage, which began Thursday, was due to increased demand from small and medium-sized businesses and residential air conditioning – up to 100,000 additional this year alone. They also blamed failures at old thermal power plants that were not properly maintained due to a lack of foreign exchange due to U.S. sanctions, as well as insufficient fuel to run some plants.

Has this happened before?

While some households have been without power for up to eight hours a day this year as the power grid has become more unstable, the current blackout is considered the worst in Cuba in years.

Officials said 1.64 gigawatts went offline during the peak, about half of the total demand at the time. The government took emergency measures to curb demand, suspending classes, closing some state-owned businesses and suspending non-essential services.

Another major collapse occurred two years ago after Hurricane Ian, a powerful Category 3 storm, damaged power equipment and took the government days to repair.

Any political consequences?

It is unknown how Cubans will respond if the current blackout continues or recurs.

But problems in the power grid have led to street protests several times in recent years, including large demonstrations in July 2021 that led to international criticism of the government for its harsh response. There were also smaller demonstrations in October 2022 and March of this year due to power outages.

The authorities are now announcing changes to electricity tariffs for small and medium-sized businesses, which have since increased sharply first approved by the communist government in 2021are taken into consideration.

What’s next?

Officials said state energy company UNE was using distributed generation to provide power to some areas of the island and a gas-fired thermal power plant was starting operations.

Cuba gets its electricity from giant thermoelectric power plants like Antonio Guiteras and a few smaller ones that require crude oil to operate. The country produces about half of the crude oil it needs, but has to buy the rest on the international market, which can be difficult and costly because of U.S. sanctions. The country also relied on allies like Venezuela and Russia for cheaper fuel.

Since last year, authorities have been working on a project to modernize the island’s power grid by using alternative energy sources. A project to build 31 solar energy production centers is underway and is expected to be completed next year.

“We are devoting absolute priority to addressing and solving this highly sensitive energy issue.” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on X. “Until he is restored there will be no rest.”

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