Cuba’s national electricity grid shut down on Friday after the island’s main power plant failed, the Cuban Energy Ministry said, causing the entire country to experience a blackout.
The Communist-run government earlier in the day closed schools and non-essential industries and sent most state workers home in a last-ditch effort to keep the lights on for citizens.
But just before noon, the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the country’s largest and most efficient, went offline, causing a complete grid failure and leaving nearly 10 million people without power.
“There will be no rest until then [power] returned,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told X.
Many services have been cancelled
The crisis has already caused officials to withdraw all non-essential government services. Schools of all levels, including universities, are closed on Sunday. Entertainment and cultural activities, including nightclubs, have also been ordered to close.
The government said only essential workers in government-run food and health industries should report to work on Friday.
Grid officials said they did not know how long it would take to restore service.
The crisis marks a new low on the island where life has become unbearable, as residents are already suffering from shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.
Almost all trading in Havana was closed at noon on Friday. The sound of privately owned generators could be heard in some homes and restaurants, many residents were sitting sweating with their doors and windows open as the sun broke through the clouds.
Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero blamed the ongoing power outages of the past few weeks on a well-known typhoon for many Cubans – crumbling infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand.
“The lack of fuel is the main reason,” Marrero said in a televised message that was marred by technical difficulties and delayed for several hours.
Strong winds and rough seas that began with Hurricane Milton last week crippled the island’s ability to deliver scarce fuel from offshore barges to its power plants, officials said.
The Cuban government has long blamed the Cold War-era US embargo, as well as new sanctions under former US president Donald Trump, for difficulties in obtaining fuel and metals for oil-based industries.
The island’s two largest power plants, Felton and the now offline Antonio Guiteras, are both inefficient, the government says, and need immediate repairs, part of a four-year plan to renew Cuba’s infrastructure.
Cuba’s fast-growing private businesses, which have contributed to increased demand on the island, will be charged higher prices for the energy they use to compensate for the shortfall, Marrero said.
Fuel supply challenges
While the demand for electricity is growing, the supply of fuel has dried up on the relatively small producing island.
Cuba’s biggest oil supplier, Venezuela, reduced shipments to the island to an average of 32,600 barrels a day in the first nine months of the year, about half of the 60,000 barrels a day shipped during the same period in 2023, according to ship-monitoring data and internal shipping documents from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company -PDVSA.
PDVSA, which also faces an aging refining infrastructure, has tried this year to avoid a new wave of fuel shortages at home, leaving small quantities available for export to allied countries such as Cuba.
Russia and Mexico, which have been sending fuel to Cuba, have also significantly reduced exports to the island.
The deficit has left Cuba to fend for itself in an overpriced market, at a time when its government is close to bankruptcy.
Energy officials said they still expect power output to improve in the coming days as weather conditions allow fuel from earlier to be distributed across the Caribbean’s largest island.
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