Cuba Goes Completely in the Dark… Again
By Francisco Acevedo
HAVANA TIMES – For the fourth time in the last six months, Cuba was left completely in the dark after another widespread blackout caused by the collapse of the National Electric Grid (SEN).
Shortly after eight o’clock on Friday night, the entire country was affected, according to the official version, by a breakdown that resulted in a significant loss of power generation in western Cuba.
The Ministry of Energy reported a failure at the Diezmero substation, on the outskirts of Havana, which triggered a chain reaction causing multiple power generation units to go offline. However, testimonies collected on social media indicated that several areas had experienced severe fluctuations in electricity flow and intermittent outages before the total suspension occurred.
October, November, and December 2024 saw the most recent total blackouts, and the SEN has been in a very precarious state for months due to frequent breakdowns in its seven thermoelectric plants, which have been in operation for decades and suffer from a chronic lack of investment.
Additionally, diesel and fuel oil for the distributed generation engines across the country is scarce, and the state does not have the necessary foreign currency to import enough fuel to balance supply with demand.
The first recent disconnection occurred on October 18, 2024, when the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant, the largest in the country, suffered an “unexpected shutdown” that caused the collapse. It took four days to reconnect the system.
On November 6, 2024, the national grid was disconnected again for five days due to Hurricane Rafael passing over eastern Cuba. A month later, on December 4, the Guiteras plant went offline once more.
Several questions are running through my mind right now.
The first is: How is it possible that the overheating of a small substation is capable of crippling the entire national system? Isn’t everything supposed to be interconnected in micro-systems, so that if something fails, only its immediate area is affected?
Then comes a suspicion, because COINCIDENTALLY, three of the four failures have occurred during a weekend, as if to minimize the impact on workplaces. In November, although the problems started with Hurricane Rafael, everything had been restored by Saturday, only for the SEN to collapse again within hours.
Only in December did the failure occur on a weekday without being caused by natural phenomena, and that truly raises too many suspicions for me.
Furthermore, as in previous cases, while hospitals and other essential services operated with minimal electricity, Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism assured on social media that its system “has a solid energy backup that ensures the continuous operation of hotels, non-hotel facilities, and related services.”
In this context, the brand-new Torre K-23 hotel in Havana was fully illuminated in the middle of the blackout, a glaring reminder of the gap between the Cuban people and the government’s priorities.
Cuban singer Yomil Hidalgo joined the criticism of the energy crisis, stating that he spent nearly 100 liters of gasoline in just 48 hours to maintain electricity in his home using a generator. And he is one of the privileged ones—most people can only wait for a miracle.
The failed connection of the Energas Boca de Jaruco plant repeatedly delayed the reconnection of western Cuba. This plant, managed in collaboration with the Canadian company Sherritt, is a key link in the synchronization and formation of the so-called micro-systems in the western region, which then supply energy to the Antonio Guiteras (Matanzas), Mariel (Artemisa), and Santa Cruz del Norte (Mayabeque) thermoelectric plants.
Havana’s floating power plant (the only surviving Turkish barge out of the eight initially contracted) was supplying some energy to the capital.
After managing to synchronize some SEN generation units, micro-systems were created in several provinces to provide essential services (hospitals, water supply, and food production centers) until full electricity was restored on Sunday night.
However, not all food production centers were guaranteed supply over the weekend. For example, a large part of the capital did not receive the daily rationed bread on either Saturday or Sunday.
Connectivity was also severely affected, as mobile data services suffered major issues throughout the entire weekend until Sunday evening. Additionally, much of the population faced water shortages because pumping stations could not operate efficiently.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel wasted no time in congratulating the population this Monday for their patience in restoring SEN stability—despite the fact that much of their hard-to-obtain and overpriced food spoiled, and classes and work activities were suspended.
For months, much of Havana has been experiencing near-daily power cuts lasting four to five hours, while in the rest of the provinces, blackouts can last 20 hours or more.
In February, authorities suspended all activities on the island for two days to prevent a total blackout, but this month, the aging infrastructure finally gave in.
The government plans to install at least 55 solar parks this year with support from China, which, according to their forecasts, would supply 12% of national demand. However, so far, only two photovoltaic parks with a capacity of just 21.8 MW each have been installed.
Over the past year, Cuba has seen a reduction in oil imports from allies such as Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia. And no matter how hard electrical sector workers try, without fuel, it is impossible to run the plants.
We have just experienced the first nationwide blackout of 2025—but it certainly won’t be the last.