Cuba at nighttime, the collapse of the electrical energy grid brings the island to its knees | EUROtoday

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Cuba’s electrical energy grid utterly collapsed following the “total disconnection” of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant (Cte) as a consequence of an accident. The very critical failure occurred round 11am this morning, native time (5pm in Italy).

Repeated failures

For months the Cuban inhabitants has been affected by the results of the power power scarcity which has brought about day by day rationing of electrical energy provides throughout a lot of the territory. The interruptions are brought on by steady failures of the out of date and poorly maintained thermoelectric energy crops which – in steady service for over 40 years – assure the technology of electrical energy on the island.

The rise in oil costs

Since the start of the yr, the worsening of the financial disaster and the rise in oil costs have added to the structural deficiencies, making it more and more tough for the federal government to buy the fuels that energy the ability crops. The improve within the value of gas on the pump by over 400%, mixed with the expansion of inflation and the problem of discovering meals, medicines and primary requirements available on the market, improve residents’ discontent. While the economic system – which contracted between 1 and a couple of% final yr – continues to decelerate. The authorities has determined to shut all colleges and a few public actions to take care of the emergency, probably the most critical for a minimum of two years.

Stop financial actions

The blackout, which started late Thursday, noticed 1.64 gigawatts exit of fee within the early night peak hours, about half of whole demand on the time. “The situation has worsened in recent days,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero stated in a speech on nationwide TV within the early hours of Friday. “We must be completely transparent… we have interrupted economic activities to guarantee energy to the population.”

Fuel scarcity

Alfredo López, head of Une, the state utility firm, stated the electrical energy outage was brought on by elevated demand from small and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners, in addition to failures of outdated thermoelectric energy crops that haven’t been subjected to sufficient upkeep and by the shortage of gas to function some crops.