On Sunday, September 7, 2025, a massive blackout swept across a third of Cuba’s provinces, plunging much of the island even deeper into an energy crisis that has become a defining feature of daily life for millions. According to Agence France-Presse, the outage struck five eastern provinces—Las Tunas, Granma, Holguin, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantanamo—after a 220 kV power line tripped, taking the system offline and compounding already relentless power shortages.
For many Cubans, this was just the latest in a series of blackouts that have grown longer and more frequent over the past year. Some towns now receive only three hours of electricity during the day and another three at night. "In those three hours, you have to run around and do everything: cook, load equipment," Holguin resident Maritza Saldivar told AFP. "If you don’t have those three hours, if there’s no electricity, you can’t do anything." Saldivar added that without gas and with coal prices soaring, her family’s options are limited.
In Santiago de Cuba, the country's second-largest city with over one million inhabitants, the situation has become so routine that residents barely register new outages. "We were already in a blackout, so we found out about the outage through the networks," said 60-year-old Javier Garcia. "Let’s see when the hell they’ll turn it on."
These rolling blackouts are not a new phenomenon. Since October 2024, Cuba has experienced four widespread outages, some lasting for several days. The crisis is rooted in a deeply deteriorated energy infrastructure: the island relies on eight aging thermoelectric plants, many of which are well past their intended lifespan, and generators that require increasingly scarce fuel. The national power grid itself is in a state of disrepair, leaving it vulnerable to cascading failures.
Efforts to modernize the system have so far fallen short. According to AFP, Cuba has installed 28 Chinese-backed solar parks out of 52 planned for this year, but these have failed to meaningfully reduce outages. Even in Havana, scheduled blackouts were extended this summer, with some neighborhoods enduring up to 10 hours without power each day. On Monday, September 1, 2025, the gap between electricity supply and demand was stark: 1,930 megawatts available against a peak demand of 3,750 megawatts, leaving a deficit of 1,960 megawatts during the critical evening hours.
Just hours after the most recent blackout, the Cuban government acknowledged the severity of the crisis in a rare moment of public candor. As reported by official journalist Ana Teresa Badía on Facebook and covered by CELEBRITAX, top officials from the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM) and the Electric Union of Cuba (UNE) admitted to a "tough" situation and announced that the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas—the largest in the country—will need to shut down for maintenance in the coming months. This move, while necessary, all but guarantees further disruptions ahead.
During a press conference, Lázaro Guerra Hernández, General Director of Electricity at MINEM, and Alfredo López Valdés, General Director of UNE, outlined the fundamental causes of the crisis: a deficit in generation capacity, lack of financing, and technological obsolescence. They pointed to ongoing instabilities at the Guiteras plant as the main source of July’s outages, while the failure to integrate Unit 5 at the Renté facility into the grid only made matters worse. Missed deliveries of liquefied gas led to a spike in electricity use for food preparation, further straining the system.
Though there was a brief reprieve in August, when both thermal and distributed generation improved, the shutdown of a floating power plant and renewed fuel shortages quickly erased any gains. As of September 2025, only two floating power plants remain operational in Cuba, underscoring the severity of the crisis.
The government’s efforts to expand renewable energy have yielded only modest results. UNE officials said that 29 photovoltaic solar parks are now operational, with another set to come online soon. But as they candidly admitted, solar generation is intermittent and cannot replace the country’s aging thermal base. "The issue with fuel availability gained particular emphasis in July, and in August the floating power plant was deployed. There is a logistical effort underway, but the situation is tough," executives said at the press conference. López added, "We at MINEM are sensitive, and you can be assured that we are working, and we will continue to do so with transparency."
The Antonio Guiteras plant itself has suffered from years of deferred maintenance. "The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, located in Matanzas, needs maintenance in the coming months, and it will be done as quickly as possible," a government spokesperson emphasized. This admission is a stark acknowledgment of the regime’s inability to provide the necessary care to its thermal generation fleet, now forcing unplanned shutdowns that will leave Cubans exposed to even longer power outages.
For ordinary Cubans, the impact of the energy crisis is felt in every aspect of daily life. Prolonged blackouts disrupt cooking, food preservation, and access to basic services. Social unrest simmers as people struggle to cope with high temperatures and uncertainty about when the lights will come back on. The government’s promises to ease blackouts during the summer have fallen flat, and many now view official statements with skepticism.
As for solutions, the government has attempted various stopgap measures: developing renewable energy, repairing generating units, and keeping the remaining floating power plants running. But these efforts have been hamstrung by a lack of resources and a dependence on imported fuel. The reality is that, for now, Cuba’s energy system remains on the brink, with no quick fix in sight.
In the words of one executive, "There is a logistical effort, but the situation is tough." For millions of Cubans, that’s an understatement. The island’s energy woes are a daily reminder of the challenges that come with aging infrastructure, limited resources, and a system struggling to keep the lights on.
