Cuba has restored electricity to much of Havana and reconnected its national grid after a 40-hour blackout that left 10 million people in the dark. Officials confirmed that by late Sunday, power had been restored to around two-thirds of the capital, with full restoration expected overnight.
The outage began Friday evening when a transmission line at a Havana substation shorted, triggering a chain reaction that shut down power generation across the island. The blackout—Cuba’s fourth nationwide outage since October—crippled businesses, shut down traffic signals, and left Havana’s two million residents struggling without electricity.
By Sunday, the country’s largest oil-fired power plants, Felton and Antonio Guiteras, were back online, a crucial step in restoring electricity island-wide. Power also returned to Pinar del Río, the last province to be reconnected.
Cuba’s aging oil-fired plants have been in crisis as fuel imports from Venezuela, Russia, and Mexico decline. Even before the latest grid failure, rolling blackouts of up to 20 hours were common. Officials blamed the worsening energy crisis on the long-standing U.S. trade embargo and recent sanctions under former President Donald Trump.
To reduce dependence on outdated infrastructure, the Cuban government is pushing for large-scale solar energy projects with Chinese support. Meanwhile, schools in several western provinces will remain closed until Tuesday to ensure proper conditions for students.
