Overview

• The Energy and Mines Ministry said the national grid was back online Thursday after a little more than 24 hours without power.
• Before full restoration, Unión Eléctrica reported service had returned in 11 of 15 provinces, with work continuing in Pinar del Río, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
• Authorities attributed the outage to an erroneous boiler overheat alarm that shut the country’s largest plant and cascaded across the system.
• The failure marks Cuba’s fifth total blackout since October 2024, reflecting a fragile network strained by aging thermal plants and fuel shortfalls.
• Recent Chinese-backed solar installations have not curbed outages, and many households and small businesses depend on generators despite scarce fuel.