Cuba successfully restored power to the majority of Havana late on Sunday, re-connecting its national electrical grid after a massive island-wide outage left 10 million people without power for nearly two days.
The capital city's electric company reported that about two-thirds of its clients had their power back by late Sunday, with the number expected to rise overnight. Cheers could be heard throughout Havana as lights flickered back on after the prolonged blackout.
The power failure originated from a transmission line shorting at a Havana substation, triggering a chain reaction that shut down power supply nationwide. The outage severely impacted Havana, disrupting commerce, halting most restaurants, and plunging the city of two million people into darkness.
By late Sunday, the country's largest oil-fired power plants, Felton and Antonio Guiteras, were operational again, marking a significant step towards restoring electricity across the island. The last province to have power restored was Pinar del Rio in western Cuba.
This blackout was the fourth nationwide outage in Cuba since October, underscoring the challenges faced by the country's outdated and struggling power infrastructure, exacerbated by diminishing oil supplies from key partners like Venezuela, Russia, and Mexico.
While progress was made in restoring power on Sunday, officials noted that the electricity generation was only meeting a third of the usual daily demand, leaving many residents still without power. As a result, schools in western provinces would remain closed until Tuesday to ensure suitable conditions for students.
Cuba attributes its mounting energy crisis to the enduring U.S. trade embargo and recent sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump, prompting the government to seek alternative energy sources such as solar power with assistance from China to reduce reliance on outdated oil-fired plants.