CUBA'S POWER GRID COLLAPSES FOR SECOND TIME IN A WEEK

Cuba's national power grid collapsed Friday for the second time in a single week, plunging the island into another nationwide blackout and underscoring the depth of the country's electricity crisis. The Associated Press and Reuters reported that the outage affected a nation of nearly 10 million people and followed a previous islandwide blackout on Monday. Reuters reported that Friday's failure was the fourth national grid collapse in Cuba so far this year. Two nationwide collapses in one week are highly unusual and point to a grid operating with little margin for error.

Cuban officials said the Friday collapse was triggered by a "fluctuation in the parameters" after a failure on a transmission line linking the central provinces of Santa Clara and Sancti Spiritus, according to AP and Reuters. That technical explanation came from Cuban authorities and represents the government's account of the triggering event. The broader pattern is clearer: Cuba's grid has become fragile enough that a single failure can cascade into an islandwide disruption, especially when generation is already far below demand.

Reuters reported that available generating capacity was about 935 megawatts against demand of roughly 3,100 megawatts. That gap leaves the system under extreme stress even before a transmission fault or plant failure occurs. Cuba's grid is built around aging, Soviet-era infrastructure, with some power plants more than 30 years old, according to AP and Reuters reporting. When fuel is scarce and older plants are already struggling, the system has fewer reserves available to absorb shocks. In that condition, a local or regional technical failure can escalate into a national outage.

Fuel shortages remain one of the central causes of the crisis. AP attributed Cuba's fuel scarcity in part to a U.S. energy blockade, while the Cuban government has blamed U.S. sanctions and restrictions for worsening the situation. Those claims and framings remain attributed to their sources. Cuba's energy crisis also reflects internal infrastructure decay, low domestic production, limited hard currency and long-running maintenance problems. The result is a power system exposed to both supply shortages and mechanical failure.

The blackouts have affected daily life across the island. Reuters reported that many residents have been receiving only limited electricity, with repeated outages disrupting homes and small businesses. AP reported that public transport has been widely affected and that Cuba has faced disruptions to essential services during the energy crisis. Refrigeration, water pumping, cooking, hospital operations, communications and basic commerce all become harder to sustain during prolonged or repeated outages. The pressure is especially severe for households without access to generators, fuel, stable cooking alternatives or reliable transportation.

The political risk is also rising. Reuters reported that tensions have increased and that spontaneous protests have occurred, though not at the scale of the major demonstrations seen in 2021. Electricity shortages have repeatedly become a source of public anger in Cuba because they intersect with food shortages, inflation, transport problems and wider economic hardship. The government's ability to restore power after each collapse does not remove the underlying problem if the system remains short of fuel and vulnerable to cascading failures. Temporary restoration can be followed by renewed rationing, localized outages or another national breakdown.

The latest collapse is therefore not just an isolated technical event. It is part of a year-long pattern of grid instability in a country facing aging infrastructure, limited fuel access and weak generating reserves. AP reported that Friday's outage was the second islandwide blackout in a week and that Cuba's grid has continued to crumble under deteriorating infrastructure and fuel scarcity. Reuters reported that officials were working to restore power after the collapse, but the system's available capacity remained far below demand. That combination means further disruptions remain possible even if the latest outage is repaired.

The next developments to watch are whether Cuba restores full national service, whether officials identify additional failures beyond the Santa Clara-Sancti Spiritus transmission line, and whether fuel deliveries or generation capacity improve. For now, the verified public record is that Cuba has suffered a second nationwide grid collapse in one week, the fourth national failure this year, in a power system already weakened by fuel shortages and aging infrastructure.

Fact-check date: 12 July 2026
Article type: News
Sources: Associated Press reporting on Cuba's second islandwide blackout in a week; Reuters, "Cuba's power grid fails for second time this week, plunging country into darkness," 10 July 2026; Cuban government and Electric Union statements as reported by AP and Reuters.