The Electric Union (UNE) reported on Monday that it is working on the gradual restoration of the National Electroenergy System (SEN) following the total collapse that occurred on Sunday night, the sixth general blackout of the year in Cuba.
According to the official statement from UNE on Facebook, at 8:41 in the morning, Units 1 and 2 of the Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Power Plant, Units 5 and 8 of the Máximo Gómez Power Plant, and Unit 3 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Power Plant were already in the process of starting up.
In addition, three additional facilities were waiting for technical conditions to join: Unit 6 of the Diez de Octubre CTE, Unit 1 of the Lidio Ramón Pérez "Felton" CTE, and the Antonio Guiteras CTE, the largest thermoelectric plant in the country, located in Matanzas.
The state media Canal Caribe added that at that same moment, they were "synchronizing two units of Energás Boca de Jaruco" to the Electric System in Mayabeque, a fast-start point that allows the creation of microsystems to reactivate larger plants.
From Cienfuegos came another sign of partial recovery: the provincial electricity company managed to create a generation island with the Junco Sur Power Plant starting at 2:30 in the morning, providing service to the Provincial Hospital, the Pediatric Hospital, and ETECSA, while also working to include the CEA Specialties Hospital.
In Camagüey, the situation at 8:20 in the morning was that electricity was available only for essential services: water pumping, the Provincial, Maternal, Oncology, Amalia Simoni, Pediatric, and Military hospitals, and the television section, as reported on their social media by the Electric Company of that province.
In Havana, the recovery was progressing at a minimal pace: only 14% of the electrical supply had been restored in the early hours, equivalent to 87,480 customers and 78.51 MW, with 12 substations and 29 energized circuits, including 19 hospitals and two water supply boosters.
The collapse on Sunday occurred just 24 hours after a partial blackout in the west of the country, which took place on Saturday due to a simultaneous outage in the 220 kV Matanzas-Cienfuegos and Matanzas-Santa Clara lines, leaving approximately 4.5 million people without electricity in five western provinces.
The system had not yet finished recovering from that blow when the new total collapse occurred, confirmed by the UNE at 10:43 PM on Sunday.
So far in 2026, the SEN has completely collapsed at least six times, with a structural deficit that has repeatedly exceeded 2,000 MW, a deteriorated thermal power infrastructure, and a chronic fuel shortage.
The crisis has sparked mass protests across the country: in June alone, 107 public demonstrations were recorded according to the Cuban Conflict Observatory, with Havana as the epicenter.
The UNE indicated that the recovery process would continue "gradually as the conditions of the SEN allow," a formula that Cubans already know by heart after months of repeated collapses.
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