Cuba has begun efforts to restore electricity after its national power grid collapsed on Saturday evening for the second time within a week, deepening an already severe energy crisis affecting the island’s roughly 10 million residents.
The outage occurred at about 18:32 local time on Saturday when a major generating unit at the Nuevitas power station in eastern Camagüey province went offline, triggering a system-wide failure that left homes, businesses and public services without electricity.
In an early morning update on Sunday, Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines announced that smaller, isolated “microsystems” had been activated across all provinces to supply electricity to critical services including hospitals, water networks and food distribution points.
The ministry said two gas-fired plants operated by Energas were running in Varadero and Boca de Jaruco, and power had reached the nearby Santa Cruz oil-fired station.
By Sunday morning, some districts in the capital, Havana, had seen partial restoration of power, with around half the city, including dozens of hospitals, regaining electricity as technicians worked to bring larger plants back online.
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Residents described the situation in practical terms, with limited lighting and communication, early morning streets were quiet, neighbours gathered outside their homes, and many reported cooking with firewood and enduring prolonged isolation from mobile and internet networks.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero acknowledged that recovery was proceeding “under very complex circumstances,” reflecting ongoing strain on Cuba’s ageing electrical infrastructure.
The latest blackout is the second full national grid collapse in six days and the third major outage this month, following a complete shutdown earlier in March.
Cuban officials and state media have attributed the increasingly frequent outages to a US-imposed oil blockade that has reduced fuel supplies to the island since Washington cut off Venezuelan exports earlier in 2026.
According to the officials, the move has compounded long-standing problems with ageing power stations and insufficient generation capacity.
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