Cuba's national electricity grid, known as the Sistema Eléctrico Nacional (SEN), collapsed for the third time in under two weeks on Tuesday, plunging the entire island into darkness and deepening a humanitarian crisis fuelled by a US energy embargo now six months old. The blackout began around midday when a fault in a generating unit in the eastern province of Holguín caused a sudden drop in grid frequency, cascading into a total shutdown. By afternoon, authorities had restored power to only around 4% of Havana, with some provinces including Guantánamo, Cienfuegos, and Matanzas reporting limited electricity to hospitals and priority sites.
The outage is the fifth total blackout this year and the third since early July, following two similar incidents last week — on Monday and Friday — each of which took authorities more than 24 hours to fully resolve. Cuba's state-owned electric utility, the Unión Eléctrica (UNE), said it had activated restoration protocols, establishing so-called "micro-islands" of power generation that are gradually interconnected to supply critical services such as hospitals and food processing plants. The country's seven thermoelectric power stations, all more than 40 years old and suffering from chronic disrepair, form the backbone of a grid ill-equipped to meet demand.
The energy crisis has its roots in both structural decay and geopolitical pressure. Cuba produces only about 40% of the fuel it requires, and since January, when the Trump administration imposed an oil embargo and threatened tariffs on any country supplying fuel to the island — a measure linked to the capture of Venezuela's then-President Nicolás Maduro — imports have dried up sharply. The embargo has compounded a five-year economic crisis already marked by food and medicine shortages, high inflation, and the fallout from previous US sanctions and failed domestic monetary reforms. Public transportation has largely halted, tens of thousands of surgeries have been cancelled, and basic services including water supply, internet, cooking, and phone connectivity have all been severely disrupted.
The human toll is considerable. More than nine million Cubans have repeatedly been left without power, with blackouts in rural areas sometimes lasting several days. Four Democratic members of the US Congress who visited Cuba last weekend described the energy embargo as turning the island into a "silent Gaza". Diplomatic efforts have yielded little: Cuba's foreign minister acknowledged in late June that talks with Washington had produced no progress. Meanwhile, Brazil's government began sending 48 tonnes of powdered milk to Cuba on Monday as emergency food aid, a sign of the island's deepening supply crisis.
Cuba, a Caribbean island nation of roughly 11 million people located approximately 150 kilometres south of Florida, has been under a broad US economic embargo for decades. The latest energy measures represent a significant escalation, and with no fuel import solution in sight, analysts and officials alike warn that the grid's fragile infrastructure may struggle to hold together through the coming weeks.