After the recent power grid failure, millions of people in Cuba remain without electricity

Cuba said it had generated only enough electricity late Wednesday to meet about a sixth of peak demand, hours after the national grid collapsed and millions of people were without power.

The National Electric Union (UNE) said it would produce 533 megawatts of electricity by evening, still only a fraction of the typical dinner demand of 3,000 to 3,200 megawatts, leaving most Cubans in the dark as night fell Caribbean island falls.

The communist-led government had previously said it would prioritize restoring power to hospitals and water pumping stations. Schools and non-essential government services were closed until further notice.

Lights flickered on in parts of the capital Havana late Wednesday. The local electric company said power had been restored to more than 260,000 customers.

It was the latest in a series of nationwide blackouts in Cuba’s aging and increasingly weak power generation system. This year, the Cuban grid fell into near-total disruption due to fuel shortages, natural disasters and economic crisis.

Falling oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico plunged the island’s aging and ailing oil power plants into complete crisis a few months ago.

Hour-long power outages and severe shortages of food, medicine and water have made life increasingly difficult for many Cubans, with record numbers fleeing the island in recent years.

Cuba blames the crisis on US sanctions that make financial transactions and purchasing fuel more difficult.

Power outage caused by power plant failure

Wednesday morning’s power outage was triggered by an outage at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, which shut down around 2 a.m. local time.

Several other major power plants were undergoing maintenance and offline when the Matanzas plant failed, crippling the power grid and leading to the nationwide collapse, the energy secretary said.

REGARD | Cubans protest October power outages:

Frustrated Cubans protest against ongoing power outages

Residents of Havana took to the streets on Monday evening to demand that something be done about the ongoing power outages after the country’s power grid suffered multiple failures and the country was plunged into darkness.

Havana hotel worker Danielis Mora woke up frustrated and confused, like many Havana residents who now suffer regular power outages.

“I didn’t know it was another total power outage,” Mora said. “Where I live… there is also no gas, if there is no electricity there is no way to prepare food, it has to be done with firewood or charcoal.”

There have been scattered protests over the past two months over repeated power outages and water, gas and food shortages.

Cuba’s dilapidated and long-outdated power grid collapsed several times in October as fuel supplies ran out and Hurricane Oscar struck the far eastern end of the island, and again in November as Hurricane Rafael passed through.

The Cuban government issued a decree last week directing state and private companies to generate more electricity from renewable sources.

The regulations also require companies, among other things, to limit the use of air conditioning as the country struggles with a worsening energy crisis.