Cuba woke up this Monday with barely a fraction of its power grid operational in the capital, following the National Electric System (SEN) experiencing its sixth total disconnection of the year on Sunday night.
According to the report from the Unión Eléctrica (UNE) on their Facebook page, the restoration in Havana reached only 14.27% of the city's customers.
The state entity detailed that 12 substations and 29 distribution circuits had been energized, benefiting 87,480 customers with 78.51 MW. Among the restored services are 19 hospitals and two water supply boosters. The UNE warned that the process would continue "gradually as conditions of the SEN allow."
The collapse on Sunday occurred just 24 hours after a partial disconnection in the western part of the country that happened on Saturday, caused by a simultaneous outage in the 220 kV lines of Matanzas-Cienfuegos and Matanzas-Santa Clara, which left approximately 4.5 million people without electricity in Pinar del Río, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Havana, and Matanzas.
The system had not yet fully recovered from that blow when the new total blackout occurred.
The percentage of restoration recorded this morning barely exceeds the 12.9% that UNE achieved in Havana after the blackout of July 10, illustrating the pattern of slow and partial recovery that recurs with each collapse.
July was the most critical month of the year: the SEN completely collapsed at least three times —on the 6th, the 10th, and the 14th of that month— and the deficit exceeded 2,315 MW on July 24, according to reports from UNE itself.
The underlying causes are structural: outdated thermal power infrastructure, recurrent failures at the plants, and fuel shortages—issues that the regime has failed to resolve after years of sustained energy crisis. On July 31, the UNE still reported 2,042 MW of impact at 7:00 p.m., with only 1,013 MW available against a demand of 3,114 MW.
Citizen frustration is expressed openly on social media. Following the announcement of the new disconnection, the comments on the UNE's post reflected accumulated desperation: "The question is, when is it connected?", "the SEN is worse than a person with Alzheimer's," and "it falls more than children learning to walk" were some of the reactions collected.
That discomfort had already manifested in street mobilization during the previous months. According to the Cuban Conflict Observatory, June 2026 recorded 107 in-person protests, nearly double the previous record, with 82 of them concentrated in Havana.
Cubalex raised that figure to 253 protests across the country during that month, with a peak of 31 events in a single day. The protests continued in July, driven by a combination of prolonged blackouts, water shortages, and food scarcity.
As Havana wakes up with 85% of its customers still without electricity, the UNE has not provided an estimated timeline for the full restoration of the system.
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