{"id":145152,"date":"2026-03-22T08:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T08:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/145152\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T08:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T08:25:07","slug":"cubas-power-grid-collapses-leaving-it-without-electricity-for-the-3rd-time-this-month-ap-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/145152\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba\u2019s power grid collapses leaving it without electricity for the 3rd time this month | Ap-world"},"content":{"rendered":"

HAVANA (AP) \u2014 Cuba\u2019s power grid<\/a> collapsed Saturday leaving the country without electricity for a third time<\/a> in March as the communist government battles with a decaying infrastructure and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade.<\/p>\n

The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced a total blackout across the island without initially giving a cause for the outage.<\/p>\n

The union later said the blackout was caused by an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camag\u00fcey province.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom that moment, a cascading effect occurred in the machines that were online,\u201d said a report from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which activated \u201cmicro-islands\u201d of generating units to provide power to vital centers, hospitals and water systems.<\/p>\n

Authorities said they were working to restore power.<\/p>\n

Power outages, whether nationwide or regional, have become relatively common in the last two years due to breakdowns in the aging infrastructure. The breakdowns are compounded by daily blackouts of up to 12 hours caused by fuel shortages, which also destabilize the system.<\/p>\n

The last nationwide blackout occurred on Monday<\/a>. Saturday’s outage was the second in the past week and the third in March.<\/p>\n

The blackouts have a significant impact on the population, whose lives are disrupted by reduced work hours, lack of electricity for cooking and food spoilage when refrigerators stop working, among many other consequences. In some cases, hospitals have canceled surgeries.<\/p>\n

President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel has said the island has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to power its economy.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s aging grid has drastically eroded in recent years. But the government has also blamed the outages on a U.S. energy blockade after U.S. President Donald Trump in January warned<\/a> of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The Trump administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in return for a lifting of sanctions. Trump also has raised the possibility of a \u201cfriendly takeover of Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reason Cuba has been struggling with dwindling oil is the removal of Venezuela\u2019s leader, which halted critical petroleum shipments from the nation that had been a steadfast ally to Havana.<\/p>\n

Trump has for months suggested Cuba\u2019s government is on the verge of collapse. After a previous time Cuba\u2019s electric grid collapsed, Trump told reporters he believed he\u2019d soon have \u201cthe honor of taking Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAVANA (AP) \u2014 Cuba\u2019s power grid collapsed Saturday leaving the country without electricity for a third time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,17766,66188,36451,11363,38,8555,50,2138,503,6482,301],"class_list":["post-145152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-blockades","tag-cuba-second-blackout","tag-disaster-planning-and-response","tag-energy-industry","tag-general-news","tag-military-and-defense","tag-politics","tag-power-outages","tag-technology","tag-utilities","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}