Overview
- The state electricity company UNE said the national grid fully cut out at about 11:05 a.m. local time on Tuesday, producing the third full-country blackout in one week.
- The Cuban Energy Ministry said crews began immediate restoration work and later blamed a fault in a block of a thermal power plant for the grid collapse.
- This outage is the third since the start of the month and the fifth since January, with two earlier blackouts last week each lasting more than 24 hours.
- Operators and analysts point to decades-old thermal plants and aging transmission lines plus tightened fuel supplies after U.S. policy moves led Venezuela to halt shipments as the root causes that make single faults cascade into nationwide failures.
- Longer and repeated outages are hitting hospitals, transport and waste collection and could deepen Cuba's severe economic crisis while raising the chance of further service interruptions and political strain over energy access.