News · Energy
Matanzas reports 162 transformers out of service and blames portable batteries in part
The head of the Matanzas provincial electricity company, Alejandro Rodríguez Azpeitía, said between 3 and 4 transformers break down every day in the province and attributed part of the damage to portable power stations, in remarks gathered by Diario de Cuba and published by Infobae.
The Matanzas electricity company reports 162 transformers out of service, with breakdowns affecting 5,687 customers. Assuming an average of 3 people per home, more than 15,000 residents of the province would be connected to equipment that is not working, its director said.
Rodríguez Azpeitía blamed a combination of factors: damage from recent storms and overloading during the brief spells when power returns. “Today the equipment people use for lighting, like ecoflows and charging stations, has considerably increased the load on transformers,” he said.
By his account, one of these portable power stations takes about 40 minutes to charge and draws around 1,200 watts. In a neighbourhood where at least 10 homes use them, the extra demand can reach 12 kilowatts on a 50-kilowatt transformer, almost 20% of the capacity it was designed for.
The same official traced that practice back to the outages: parts of Matanzas can go more than 24 hours without power and, when it comes back, residents cook, do laundry, cool their fridges and charge their devices all at once.
Replacements have been delayed for months. The provincial transformer plant is “practically at a standstill” for lack of oil and the province had gone about 15 days without receiving new units, the official admitted; of the 16 received recently, priority went to the sites with the most homes affected. One transformer has been awaiting replacement since July 23 in a hamlet where 70 homes have no power, and another has been pending since August 3. The authorities also blame some failures on theft of dielectric oil.
Faced with the shortage of equipment, the company announced it will cut back the protected circuits serving hospitals: with 12 switches it expects to free up 19 megawatts now used to shield those facilities and spread them across other circuits, keeping hospital supply while trimming outage hours elsewhere on the grid.
Sources: Infobae
Data updated: 2026-11-08T16:15:00.000Z