Cuba’s power grid failed Friday, less than a day after the government stressed the need to cripple the economy to conserve electricity in the face of massive gasoline shortages and widespread periodic power outages. The whole country was plunged into darkness.
Cuba’s Energy Ministry announced on X that a breakdown at a thermal power plant in Matanzas, east of Havana, caused a nationwide power outage on Friday morning.
The announcement comes less than a day after Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz gave a late-night televised address with state officials to discuss the ongoing power crisis. Experts said it was the worst crisis in a country long accustomed to food and power shortages. I have experienced this before.
The country has been running out of fuel to power its power grid in recent weeks, causing large parts of the country to remain without power for up to 12 hours at a time.
Marrero urged people to reduce their usage Thursday night, saying that once power is restored, demand will surge, putting further stress on the grid.
To ease the strain on the power grid, authorities announced Thursday night that all schools would be closed until Monday, and cultural and non-essential activities such as nightclubs would be closed.
Announcements posted on some government websites said only essential employees should come to work and hospitals would remain open. All non-essential services that consume energy are stopped.
“In other words, we are paralyzing economic activity,” Marrero said.
He said the crisis was exacerbated by the inability to offload fuel shipments from oil carriers due to bad weather. Cuba’s energy infrastructure is in poor condition, but fuel shortages are the biggest contributing factor to the ongoing problem, he said.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel has criticized the U.S. embargo on Cuba, saying it limits the country’s ability to import fuel and imposes hardship on the Cuban people.
Miriam Leyva, an opposition journalist in Havana, said power shortages were so severe that Marrero’s own video press conference was delayed for several hours due to technical problems, likely due to problems with the power grid.
The fact that the normally secretive country’s leaders took to the air to share detailed updates underscores the severity of the crisis, with government officials nervous and even frantic. She said it shows that the
“This is a situation that has never happened before,” Leyva said. “What’s worse, they have no idea when or how to resolve it.”
Leyva said the problem is particularly acute in areas outside of Havana, where people live without electricity for long periods of time.
He said the government appears to be trying to address the challenge by limiting the duration of power outages in areas around Havana where there are fears of civil unrest.
She said she went to the bakery on Friday for bread but couldn’t find any.
“We don’t have bread, and we don’t know when there will be bread,” she said. “Sometimes it’s because we don’t have flour. We don’t have electricity today.”
Alfredo López Valdes, director general of the state-run electricity company, added that the country is working on a solution, but it won’t come soon.
“We are fighting. We are not sitting idle,” Lopez said. “We recognize that the situation is very difficult.”
