Cuba’s power grid collapses leaving it without electricity for the 3rd time this month : NPR

People walk on a street in the dark during a power outage in Havana, Cuba, Saturday March 21, 2026.

Ramón Espinosa/AP

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Ramón Espinosa/AP

HAVANA — Cuba’s power grid collapsed Saturday, leaving the country without power for the third time in March as the communist government struggles with crumbling infrastructure and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade.

The Cuban Electricity Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced a total blackout across the island, without initially giving a cause.

The union later said the outage was caused by an unexpected failure of a generator at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province.

“From this point on, a cascading effect occurred in the machines that were online,” says a report from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which activated “micro-islands” of production units to supply electricity to vital centers, hospitals and water systems.

Authorities said they were working to restore power.

Power outages, whether national or regional, have become relatively common over the past two years due to breakdowns in aging infrastructure. Added to the outages are daily outages of up to 12 hours caused by fuel shortages, which also destabilize the system.

The latest nationwide power outage occurred Monday. Saturday’s outage was the second in the past week and the third in March.

Power outages have a significant impact on the population, whose lives are disrupted by reduced working hours, lack of electricity for cooking, and food spoilage when refrigerators no longer work, among other consequences. In some cases, hospitals have canceled surgeries.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the island had not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to power its economy.

Cuba’s aging network has eroded significantly in recent years. But the government has also blamed the outages on the U.S. energy blockade after U.S. President Donald Trump warned in January of tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba. The Trump administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in exchange for lifting sanctions. Trump also raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba.”

Another reason why Cuba is struggling with dwindling oil is the ouster of Venezuela’s leader, who cut off essential oil deliveries from the country that was a steadfast ally of Havana.

Trump has been suggesting for months that the Cuban government is on the verge of collapse. After Cuba’s power grid collapsed, Trump told reporters he believed he would soon have “the honor of taking Cuba.”