People talk during a power outage in Havana on Saturday. At that point, some 4.5 million Cubans, nearly half of the country's population, were left without electricity due to a failure in the National Electric System that affected seven provinces from the western to the central region of the island. Photo by Ernesto Mastrascusa/EPA
Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Cuba awoke Monday with only a fraction of its electrical grid operating in the capital after the National Electric System suffered its sixth nationwide blackout of the year the night before.
The latest collapse occurred at 10:43 p.m. EDT, just 21 hours after power had been restored following a previous partial blackout that had already severely affected five western provinces, according to reports on Facebook by the state-owned Electric Union.
As has become increasingly common, the nation confirmed the system's collapse in a brief statement without providing details about the immediate cause, although the grid had been operating with a critical deficit that exceeds 2,000 megawatts, Martí Noticias reported.
With this blackout, the country has recorded six total nationwide grid collapses in 2026 and 11 since late 2024.
