Cuba suffered a general blackout caused by a crash of its national electricity grid, officials have said.
Cuba’s national electrical grid has collapsed, the country’s Energy and Mines ministry said, after a substation failed. This is the fourth nationwide blackout the island has suffered in the last five months.
Blackouts spread across a large swath of western Cuba, including the capital, Havana on Friday.
Work underway to restore power
“At around 8:15 p.m. tonight, a breakdown … caused the significant loss of power in western Cuba and with it the fall of the national electricity system,” the Ministry of Energy and Mines posted on social media.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said the government was “working tirelessly” to restore power. “In light of the unexpected disconnection of the National Electric System, work is already underway to ensure its speedy recovery,” he said in a post on social media.
The lights were out across all of Havana’s waterfront skyline, according to Reuters news agency, with only a scattered few tourist hotels operating on fuel-fired generators.
Cuban human rights activist Elsa Morejon posted pictures to X of the largely dark capital from her balcony, saying “Havana went dark. massive blackout.
Reports on social media from outlying provinces both east and west of the capital suggested much of the country of 10 million people was without power.
Thursday already saw the country’s electricity services interrupted for much of the day. The reasons given were plant failures and a lack of fuel, the Cuba Electricity Union said in a statement.
Cuba saw a string of nationwide blackouts late in 2024 that plunged the country’s antiquated power generation system into near-total disarray.
Hours-long rolling blackouts have been the norm for months.
Why does Cuba’s power system keep failing?
Cuba’s electrical grid and oil-fired power plants are old and falling apart. Constructed decades ago, they are scarcely maintained, making them prone to malfunction.
To make matters worse, power stations in the Communist run-country are driven by crude oil. According to the International Energy Agency, Cuba uses crude to generate 80% of its electricity.
Because it produces very little fossil fuel of its own, Cuba depends almost entirely on crude imports from nearby Venezuela to keep its power on.
But Venezuela has recently slashed shipments to Cuba as it faces its own economic instability, while allies Russia and Mexico have also cut exports to the Caribbean nation.
This has left cash-strapped Cuba buying crude on the pricier spot market.
On top of this, Cuba has failed to curb its reliance on costly fossil fuels, with only 4% of power generation coming from renewables.
Edited by: Sean Sinico
DW News
