Cuba plunged into another nationwide blackout

Cuba experiences another outage in the National Electric System, leaving the entire country without electricity.

It was the third such incident in two weeks, at a time when a US oil embargo is straining the island’s grid.

Cuba has been running out of fuel since January, when U.S. President Donald Trump deepened the island’s ongoing economic and financial crisis by threatening tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to the island.

Public transportation was largely halted and authorities canceled tens of thousands of surgeries.

Cuba produces only 40 percent of the fuel it needs. There does not seem to be a solution to fuel imports yet.

The state-owned Electricity Association said the problem at a generating unit in the eastern state of Holguín caused a “sudden frequency change” that led to the SEN outage at noon on Tuesday.

Both the Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Electricity Union stated that “protocols for its restoration have been put in place,” meaning “micro islands” have been created and connected to each other to provide electricity to priority areas such as hospitals and food processing plants.

While electricity was restored to some parts of the capital Havana in the afternoon, officials stated that four percent of the city had electricity.

Guantanamo and Cienfuegos provinces reported that they had begun distributing electricity to their hospitals, and Matanzas confirmed that electricity had been restored in the city’s historic centre.

Last week, two nationwide power outages on Monday and Friday left more than nine million Cubans in the dark; There were two more power outages in March and several more regional outages.

The blackouts have a significant impact on the population and, combined with the energy embargo, have led to transport restrictions, reduced working hours and flight cancellations, as well as serious public health consequences.

Power outages also affect essential activities such as cooking, water supply, internet and telephone services.

Many families have installed solar backup systems such as panels and portable batteries, and the population’s main means of transportation consists of electric motorcycles and tricycles equipped with photovoltaic power.