Cuba hit by massive islandwide blackout as power grid crisis deepens

Officials in Cuba reported an islandwide blackout on Monday in the country of some 11 million people as its energy and economic crises deepen and its power grid continues to crumble.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines said on X that there had been a “complete disconnection” of the country’s electrical system and that it was investigating, noting there were no failures in the units that were operating when the grid collapsed.

It was the third major blackout in Cuba over the past four months.

Tomás David Velázquez Felipe, a 61-year-old resident of Havana, said the relentless outages make him think that Cubans who can should just pack up and leave the island. “What little we have to eat spoils,” he said. “Our people are too old to keep suffering.”

Cuba’s ageing grid has drastically eroded in recent years, leading to an increase in daily outages and islandwide blackouts. But the government has also blamed its woes on a US energy blockade after President Donald Trump in January warned of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The Trump administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalisation in return for a lifting of sanctions. Trump has also raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba”.

On Monday, he said he believes he will have the “honour of taking Cuba”.

“I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it,” Trump said about Cuba, calling it a “very weakened nation”.

The US Embassy in Cuba wrote on X on Monday that “there is no information on when power would be restored”.

“Cuba’s national electrical grid is increasingly unstable and prolonged scheduled and unscheduled power outages are a daily occurrence across the country,” it wrote. “Take precautions by conserving fuel, water, food and mobile phone charge, and be prepared for significant disruption.”

William LeoGrande, a professor at American University who has tracked Cuba for years, said the country’s energy grid has not been maintained properly and its infrastructure is “way past its normal useful life”.

“The technicians working on the grid are magicians to keep it running at all given the shape that it’s in,” LeoGrande said.

LeoGrande said that if the island drastically reduces consumption and expands renewables, it can struggle along for a while without oil shipments. “But it would be constant misery for the general population, and eventually the economy could collapse just completely and then you would have social chaos and probably mass migration,” he said.

To ramp up solar power even faster than Cuba did last year, LeoGrande said other countries, principally China, would have to be willing to double or more their provision of such equipment.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Friday that the island had not received oil shipments in three months and was operating on solar power, natural gas and thermoelectric plants, and that the government has had to postpone surgeries for tens of thousands of people.

Yaimisel Sánchez Peña, 48, said she was upset that the food she buys with money that her son in the US sends keeps spoiling, adding that the outages also affect her 72-year-old mother: “Every day, she suffers.”

Mercedes Velázquez, a 71-year-old Cuban resident, lamented yet another blackout. “We’re here waiting to see what happens,” she said, adding that she recently gave away part of a soup she made while it was still fresh so as not to throw it out. “Everything goes bad.”

Read moreCuba hit by massive blackout, leaving millions without power in Havana and western provinces

A massive outage over a week ago affected the island’s west, leaving millions without power. Another major blackout affected western Cuba in early December.

Critical oil shipments from Venezuela were halted after the US attacked the South American country in early January and arrested its then-president, Nicolás Maduro.

While Cuba produces 40% of its petroleum and has been generating its own power, it has not been sufficient to meet demand as its electric grid continues to crumble.

“And on top of all that, the Cuban government doesn’t have the hard currency to import spare parts or upgrade the plant or grid itself. It’s just a perfect storm of collapse,” LeoGrande said.

He noted that the thermoelectric plants have also been using heavy oil, whose sulphur content is corroding the equipment.

On Friday, Díaz-Canel confirmed that Cuba was holding talks with the US government as the problems continue to deepen.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)