Western Cuba Has a Massive Outage as the Power Grid Suffers

On Wednesday, millions of people in Havana and a large portion of western Cuba lost power due to a major blackout. The island is already dealing with ongoing power outages and a worsening economic crisis.

According to authorities, the outage began when a transmission line connecting two major thermoelectric facilities collapsed, causing service to stop in half of the nation. The Ministry of Energy and Mines’ general director, Lázaro Guerra, stated that while experts were trying to restore electricity progressively, the system is still under a lot of stress.

The darkness was just one more setback for many locals. “This is just awful. “The thermoelectric plants are constantly malfunctioning,” stated Liubel Quintana, a resident of Havana, in Spanish.

Following a statewide blackout in September of last year, the power outage occurred after two consecutive days of peak-hour shortages across the island. Officials then cited outdated infrastructure and ongoing fuel shortages as the main causes of Cuba’s failing grid.

In addition to interfering with water service, power outages have put pressure on the island’s vulnerable private sector enterprises, many of which depend on generators that they can barely afford to run.

Cuba’s ongoing energy issues reflect the nation’s broader economic crisis, worsened by the pandemic that decimated the travel and tourism sector, stricter U.S. sanctions, and an unsuccessful monetary reform aimed at unifying the currency.

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