Cuba Faces Nationwide Power Outage Due to Grid Collapse
Cuba’s aging power grid completely failed again on Monday, resulting in a national blackout that left millions without electricity. This marks the third major outage this year, adding to the ongoing struggles of the National Electricity System (SEN), which is projected to collapse fully by 2026. Since the grid’s total failure at the end of 2024, Cubans have been grappling with increasingly frequent power outages. Reports indicate that the blackout started around noon local time and remained largely unresolved 24 hours later.
As of now, Cuba’s electricity authority, Unión Eléctrica (UNE), has not shared any information regarding the cause of this latest failure, nor have they given a timeline for restoring power.
For decades, Cubans have faced nearly daily outages, a reflection of the regime’s failure to adequately invest in infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. The governing party’s persistent mismanagement over more than 67 years has brought the power grid and other essential services to near collapse. Interestingly, some sectors, like domestic tourism managed by the military, seem to thrive amid this chaos, providing funds for state repression.
The country heavily relies on seven aging thermal power plants, some over 40 years old, that haven’t been properly maintained. Following years of breakdowns, the grid fully collapsed in 2024. While the regime managed to restore some power, conditions have deteriorated since then, with outages now lasting over 30 hours in some cases.
According to reports, by Tuesday morning, only a slight recovery had occurred, with power restored to around 48,000 residents in Havana—just about 5% of the capital’s population. Some regions, particularly in eastern Cuba, are struggling with minimal electricity generation.
The current power outage has seemingly not affected the leadership or state media, which continue to operate. President Miguel Díaz-Canel took to social media to blame the United States for the grid’s instability, tying it to recent accusations of the U.S. blocking essential fuel shipments. This has intensified under the regime’s reliance on foreign supplies to sustain their governance.
The situation has become more complex for the communist government as they have lost access to discounted oil from Venezuela—a crucial resource for keeping the regime afloat. Energy Minister Lázaro Guerra remarked that restoring the power grid would be “more difficult than usual” because of significant fuel shortages.
Previous outages this year were linked to failures at the Antonio Guiteras thermal power plant in Matanzas. This plant reportedly failed again prior to Monday’s collapse, exacerbating existing issues as other plants were already offline. Many residents in Havana were reportedly unaware of the grid’s failure, as some had been without power for approximately 20 hours before the outage officially began.
