Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, March 16, the country’s grid operator said, leaving around 10 million people without power amid a U.S.-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.
Grid operator UNE said on social media it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run country.
Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission.
Officials said they had begun restoring power to small clusters of circuits, or microsystems, across the country, an early but necessary first step in bringing the full grid back online.
The United States has ratcheted up pressure this year on long-time foe Cuba since capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – Cuba’s most important foreign benefactor – in January.
U.S. President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatened to slap tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid.
Cuba said on Friday that it has entered into talks with the United States with the hope of defusing the crisis. Trump has said in recent weeks that Cuba is on the verge of collapse and is eager to make a deal with the United States.
Cubans have grown accustomed to power outages, whether tied to the oil supply shortfalls or systemic failures in the grid, which can also be the result of depressed power generation.
