The Briefing
- A pre-dawn fire at Unit 1 of the Ernesto Guevara de la Serna thermoelectric plant in Santa Cruz del Norte, Mayabeque, broke out at 6:55 a.m. on October 16, pushing Cuba's projected peak-hour blackout coverage to a record 75.5% — the highest simultaneous affectation documented since the government began releasing electricity data in 2022.
- Eight of Cuba's 16 thermoelectric generation units were already offline when the fire broke out; the blaze at the Ernesto Guevara plant brought the total to nine, leaving the national grid with only 740 MW of available capacity against a projected peak demand of 2,900 MW — a shortfall of 2,190 MW.
- On the same day, the U.S. dollar hit 800 Cuban pesos on the informal exchange market for the first time on record, compounding a financial crisis that is squeezing Cuba's capacity to import fuel and spare parts for an electrical infrastructure decades past its design life.
