{"id":9017,"date":"2024-10-20T14:08:05","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T18:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9017"},"modified":"2024-10-21T14:10:54","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T18:10:54","slug":"what-to-know-about-the-electrical-grid-failure-that-plunged-cuba-into-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9017","title":{"rendered":"What to Know About the Electrical Grid Failure That Plunged Cuba into Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions of people in Cuba were left without electricity for two days after the nation\u2019s energy grid went down when one of the island\u2019s major power plants failed.<\/a><\/span> The widespread blackout that swept across the county was the worst in years.<\/p>\n

Authorities have restored power to some people<\/a><\/span> in Cuba\u2019s capital, where 2 million people live, but much of Havana has remained dark. The impact of the blackout<\/a><\/span> goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.<\/p>\n

People have resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before their food went bad in refrigerators.<\/p>\n

Here are a few things to know:<\/p>\n

What happened and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after the failure of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas Province east of Havana.<\/p>\n

Even in a country that for decades has been accustomed to frequent outages amid a series of economic crises,<\/a><\/span> the grid failure was unprecedented in modern times, aside from incidents involving powerful hurricanes, such as one in 2022.<\/p>\n

Even as Cuba worked to fix the power problems Saturday, the country issued hurricane watches for the far eastern Guantanamo, Holguin and Las Tunas provinces as a tropical storm developed into Hurricane Oscar<\/a><\/span>, the 10th hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.<\/p>\n

A man drives his American classic car during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National Hurricane Center said Sunday that Oscar was expected to produce a dangerous storm surge in parts of the southeastern Bahamas and Cuba<\/p>\n

Authorities said the outage that began Thursday stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residences\u2019 air conditioners \u2014 as many as 100,000 additional ones this year alone. They also blamed breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven\u2019t been properly maintained because of a lack of hard currency due to U.S. sanctions, as well as insufficient fuel to operate some facilities.<\/p>\n

Has this happened before?<\/strong><\/p>\n

While some homes have spent up to eight hours a day this year without electricity as the grid has grown more unstable, the current power failure is considered Cuba\u2019s worst in years.<\/p>\n

Officials said that 1.64 gigawatts went offline during peak hours, about half the total demand at the time. The government implemented emergency measures to slash demand, suspended classes, and shut down some state-owned workplaces and canceled non-essential services.<\/p>\n

Another major collapse occurred two years ago after Hurricane Ian, an intense Category 3 storm, damaged power installations and the government took days to fix them.<\/p>\n

Any political consequences?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Residents eat outside their homes to avoid the indoor heat during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Residents play dominoes during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s unknown how Cubans will react if the current blackout endures or recurs.<\/p>\n

But problems in the electrical grid have helped sparked 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 due to blackouts in October 2022 and March of this year.<\/p>\n

Authorities now say changes to electricity rates for small- and medium-sized companies, which have proliferated since they were first authorized by the communist government in 2021<\/a><\/span>, are being considered.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Officials said the state-owned power company UNE was using distributed generation to provide power to some areas of the island and that a gas-fired thermoelectric plant was starting operations.<\/p>\n

Cuba gets its power from huge thermoelectric plants like Antonio Guiteras and some smaller ones, which require crude oil to operate. The country produces about half of the crude needed, but must purchase some of the rest on the international market, which can be difficult and costly due to U.S. sanctions. It has also depended on allies like Venezuela and Russia for cheaper fuel.<\/p>\n

Authorities have been working since last year on a project to upgrade the island\u2019s electrical grid through the use of alternative power sources. A project to build 31 centers generating solar energy is under way and projected to be completed next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are devoting absolute priority to addressing and solving this highly sensitive energy contingency,\u201d Cuba\u2019s President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel<\/a><\/span> wrote on X. \u201cThere will be no rest until its restoration.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Andrea Rodriguez, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions of people in Cuba were left without electricity for two days after the nation\u2019s energy grid went down when one of the island\u2019s major power plants failed. The widespread blackout that swept across the county was the worst in years. Authorities have restored power to some people in Cuba\u2019s capital, where 2 million people live, but much of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/d5f5cb9\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5616x3744+0+0\/resize\/1600x1066!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F19%2F2a%2Fcdbe7a43b66582a9ff8aab41f02e%2F64e4ed7887ed47bab421c9dbf87bcd05","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9020,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions\/9020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}