Cuba’s power grid collapses for the third time this month, leaving the country without power: NPR

HAVANA – Cuba’s power grid collapsed on Saturday, leaving the country without electricity for the third time in March, as the communist government grapples with deteriorating infrastructure and a US-imposed oil blockade.

The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, initially announced a complete blackout across the entire island without specifying the cause of the outage.

The union later said the blackout was caused by the unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province.

“From that moment on, a cascading effect occurred in the machines that were online,” said a report from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which activated “micro-islands” of generating units to provide power to vital centers, hospitals and water systems.

Officials said they were working to restore power.

Power outages, whether nationwide or regional, have become relatively common over the past two years due to aging infrastructure. Daily blackouts of up to 12 hours due to fuel shortages aggravate breakdowns, which also destabilize the system.

The last nationwide blackout occurred on Monday. Saturday’s cut was the second in the past week and the third in March.

Blackouts 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 stop working, among many other consequences. In some cases, hospitals have canceled surgeries.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said that the island has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel needed to power its economy.

Cuba’s old grid has suffered severe degradation in recent years. But the government has also blamed the US energy blockade after US President Donald Trump in January threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The Trump administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Trump has also raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba.”

Another reason Cuba is struggling with dwindling oil is the ouster of Venezuela’s leader, who blocked vital petroleum shipments from the country that was a staunch ally of Havana.

Trump had suggested for months that Cuba’s government was on the verge of collapse. Last fall, after Cuba’s electric grid collapsed, Trump told reporters that he believed he would soon “have the honor of taking over Cuba.”