By Dave Sherwood
HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba said it had reconnected its national electrical grid on Thursday, though generation remained well below demand one day after a plant failure knocked out power to millions across the island.
The National Electric Union (UNE) said on Thursday that it had boosted generation to 1,450 megawatts (MW), still less than half the typical peak demand of 3,200 MW.
“The (grid) is operating normally now, but because of a generation deficit we don’t have sufficient capacity to cover demand,” said Lazaro Guerra, who oversees the sector for Cuba’s energy ministry.
Havana, however, appeared to have returned to normalcy on Thursday. Power had returned to all of the capital city’s “circuits,” the local electric company said, and all of its hospitals were back online.
Around half of Cuba’s power generation facilities are offline for maintenance or broken down. All are decades old and producing well under capacity. As a result, a majority of Cuba’s residents suffer hours-long, rolling blackouts on a daily basis even when the grid is functional.
Cuba’s electrical grid has been on the brink of collapse for years, as fuel shortages, a string of natural disasters and an economic crisis have left the island’s government unable to maintain the system’s decrepit infrastructure.
Dwindling oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico tipped the system into full crisis this year, leading to several nationwide blackouts that have sparked unrest and increasing anger among the population.
The blackouts, together with food, medicine and water shortages, have vastly complicated life on the island and driven a record-breaking exodus of its residents since 2020.
Cuba’s communist-run government blames the crisis on the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, which stymies some financial transactions and makes it more difficult to purchase fuel and spare parts.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Mark Porter)
