For a lot of Cubans, the sudden cease of a fan is extra than simply an annoyance on a tropical island; it’s a each day reminder of a essential, nation-wide downside. On a median day, the Cuban authorities can solely meet 50 to 70 % of its nation’s electrical energy wants. On prime of that, Cuba’s total grid has collapsed 4 instances within the final six months.
The issue stems from years of neglect of Cuba’s power infrastructure, exacerbated by constrained entry to overseas capital and a failure to adapt to new power choices. Consequently, Cubans are experiencing a major breakdown in primary companies, such because the storage of recent merchandise, primary meals preparation, public lighting and entry to companies. This has pressured residents to take extraordinary measures, like cooking a number of meals directly and dealing by flashlight.
Cuba isn’t simply in an power disaster; the nation’s grid sits on the verge of systemic failure. The Nationwide Electrical System, most of which was constructed after 1959, hasn’t acquired the funding and upkeep it wants for 35 years—a consequence of Cuba’s advanced political and financial historical past. If neglect continues, the island nation can pay the excessive worth of additional financial decline, and elevated social and political instability.
How did my residence nation get right here?
Cuba’s Power Infrastructure Disaster
Cuba’s grid infrastructure is so weak that run-of-the-mill problems like transmission line failures and generator journeys are inflicting widespread outages. The sudden shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras oil-fired energy plant began the overall blackout in October 2024. Healthy grids ought to be capable to detect and isolate these sorts of points, and supply backup via built-in redundancies. However Cuba’s outdated safety techniques couldn’t detect the faults and there weren’t sufficient spinning reserves to compensate for the technology instability, making restoration inconceivable.
Underlying the blackouts are three systemic issues: years of insufficient funding, substandard gasoline, and deferred upkeep. Cuba’s growing older thermal energy crops—the spine of the system, practically all of which run on crude oil or gasoline oil—have gotten much less dependable, and should function properly beneath capability due to gasoline shortages and corrosion. One of many greatest, the 330-megawatt Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas, usually breaks down as a result of there aren’t sufficient alternative components to restore it. Different services have been hit with adversarial occasions, such the 2022 fires on the Lidio Ramón Pérez (Felton) and Máximo Gómez (Mariel) thermal crops. In the course of the first 5 months of 2025, solely 34 % of the capability of all of Cuba’s power plants, primarily based on 2023 numbers, was obtainable on a median each day foundation.
Cuba’s power system additionally suffers from years of reliance on home, poor-quality heavy crude oil, which is corrosive as a result of it’s excessive in sulfur. This has accelerated the wear and tear and tear on boilers, generators, and pipes in Cuba’s energy crops, shortening their lifespans and inflicting frequent and expensive outages. Cuba has secured a considerable quantity of oil from Venezuela since 2000 via a good settlement. However Venezuela’s steady financial issues have made this outdoors oil supply much less dependable, with shipments dwindling lately.
To assist compensate for energy deficits, Cuba in 2019 began renting floating thermal energy crops from different international locations corresponding to Turkey’s Karpowership. By 2023, eight of those sorts of ships have been floating in Mariel Bay, Havana Bay and Santiago de Cuba Bay. However their destiny is now simply one other symptom of the disaster. The federal government had bother paying the excessive leasing costs, so the ships’ operators withdrew from Cuba’s waters, taking a whole lot of megawatts with them.
Cuba’s Renewable Power Choices
Heavy crude oil isn’t Cuba’s solely useful resource; it has a wealth of untapped renewable power choices, together with photo voltaic, wind, and doubtlessly sugarcane biomass. However the transition to renewables has progressed slowly and considerably haphazardly, regardless of bold objectives set by the federal government.
Essential renewable energy projects usually get delayed as a consequence of bureaucratic hurdles and a scarcity of funding. The instability of the grid makes it more difficult to combine large-scale renewable power installations, as they require steady connections to perform successfully. And whereas the nation actively seeks solar energy, it’s overlooking its once-thriving sugar sector, and the biomass and ethanol assets that include it.
The Cuban authorities’s puzzling choice to speculate closely in constructing costly motels and enhancing tourism infrastructure whereas neglecting vital grid updates has additionally made the system extra weak. From 2010 and 2024, Cuba spent about 32 % of whole funding on tourism-related infrastructure, and solely 12 % on power infrastructure, based on Cuba’s Nationwide Statistics Workplace.
Cuba’s financial system is in a poor state because of the well-established inefficiencies of its financial mannequin and U.S. sanctions that worsened below the primary Trump administration and stay largely in place. Consequently, the federal government lacks the mandatory laborious foreign money to import gasoline, purchase the spare components it wants, entry the most recent expertise, and entice vital overseas funding that’s important for upgrading its power infrastructure.
Cuba’s Energy Outages and Rationing Breeds Resentment
The Cuban authorities reacts to its extreme deficit with hanging public ceremony. Each morning, normally between 7:00 and eight:00, officers brazenly declare the anticipated electricity generation shortfall. Then, provincial leaders throughout the island painstakingly select which of their communities will lose energy and for the way lengthy—on common 19 hours, and a few over 24 hours.
Each day electrical energy deficits in Cuba have averaged round 1600 MW in 2025, based on knowledge compiled from each day press releases from Unión Eléctrica (UNE), the state-owned firm chargeable for Cuba’s electrical energy system, and information shops. Information from Cuba’s 4 current grid collapses have been excluded.
Blackouts for these “interruptible circuits,” as provincial electrical corporations confer with them, are speculated to rotate primarily based on a schedule. However the precise electrical energy availability nearly at all times falls wanting the plan, so the rotation isn’t carried out as supposed. And with sure companies and companies being prioritized for energy, a disproportionate share of the outages falls on a portion of shoppers.
Havana, the capital, will get partly shielded from this, as a consequence of its political and financial significance. It’s a favoritism that understandably breeds resentment in different areas. However even in Havana, residents on interruptible circuits should take care of not less than 4 hours of energy outages daily—a scenario that has worsened this 12 months.
In each the town and the countryside, the ability outages and extended uncertainty have altered primary companies, economies and each day life. Fridges lose their cooling energy, ruining useful meals that was bought at a excessive worth. Companies should shut, leading to misplaced income and productiveness. College students wrestle to check when their cellphone batteries are low, partly as a result of they use their telephones as flashlights. Some medical services have backup turbines, however they’re not at all times operational as a consequence of a scarcity of spare components. Internet connectivity has grown much less dependable.
Cuba’s Restoration Plans
The Cuban administration has admitted that the scenario is extreme and has developed particular recovery plans. These embody investing in thermal plant upkeep, including new capability, including photo voltaic power, and securing gasoline provides from overseas. Nevertheless, progress is gradual and restricted by the identical issues that induced the disaster within the first place.
To repair the thermal items, it’s crucial to deliver main electrical energy suppliers, corresponding to Guiteras and Cienfuegos, again to a state the place they’ll function reliably once more. Nevertheless, this technique is akin to patching up a dam that’s falling aside. Lengthy-term enhancements are extra necessary than simply repairs, however they require assets that aren’t at the moment obtainable.
There are insurance policies in place that encourage rooftop solar, which individuals generally purchase from different international locations. Small photo voltaic parks are additionally being constructed; on the finish of 2024 photo voltaic capability reached 298 MW. Pilot tasks for wind farms are underway.
However improvement lacks scale and pace. Massive tasks usually wrestle with monetary constraints and insufficient planning. The federal government set a aim of deriving 37 % of Cuba’s power from renewable sources by 2030; to this point they’ve reached solely 3 %.
Cuba is actively seeking to accomplice internationally on power initiatives. Agreements with Russia primarily concentrate on modernizing current thermal services and presumably establishing new ones. Mexico and different allies have additionally helped by sending gasoline provides.
Talks with potential buyers for inexperienced tasks are transferring ahead, however the funding local weather is kind of tough due to Cuba’s financial mannequin and disaster, its historical past of defaults on funds to overseas corporations, and U.S. sanctions. In partnership with China, Cuba is constructing as much as 2,000 MW of photo voltaic capability over greater than 92 photo voltaic parks throughout the nation. China already despatched Cuba gear for greater than 100 MW of photo voltaic capability via a unique program. By January 2026, about 1,100 MW of this new capability is predicted to be operational, based on the Cuban authorities.
As the first power grid fails, Cubans with assets are taking issues into their very own palms, usually in determined methods. Companies, hospitals, and rich households are putting in gasoline and photo voltaic turbines; the incessant noise from which has change into a part of the town’s soundscape. Some communities are working collectively to put in photo voltaic and battery techniques. For instance, a farmers’ cooperative in Artemisa powers its processing and irrigation services this manner. These examples present a essential, bottom-up change, however they’re few and much between due to prohibitive upfront prices.
Cuba’s individuals are struggling as a result of the power system is being pushed too far. And the great modifications required for real, long-term restoration are at the moment past the island’s capabilities. The lights got here again on after every main blackout, however the specter of the subsequent one looms continuously.
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