Cuba's national power grid collapsed on Saturday, plunging the entire island into darkness for the third time this month. The blackout comes as the communist government struggles with an aging infrastructure and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade.
The Cuban Electric Union initially announced the total blackout without providing an immediate cause. Later, the Ministry of Energy and Mines said the outage was triggered by an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province. This caused a cascading effect on other online machines.
The ministry activated 'micro-islands' of generating units to provide power to vital centres, hospitals and water systems. Power outages, both nationwide and regional, have become increasingly common over the past two years due to breakdowns in the aging infrastructure, compounded by daily blackouts of up to 12 hours caused by fuel shortages.
The last nationwide blackout occurred on Monday. Saturday's outage is the second in the past week and the third in March. The blackouts severely disrupt daily life, reducing work hours, causing food spoilage and leaving many without electricity for cooking.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel has said Cuba has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. The country produces barely 40 percent of the fuel it needs to power its economy. The government blames the outages on a U.S. energy blockade, intensified by President Donald Trump's threat of tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba.
