The province of Santiago de Cuba was reconnected to the National Electric System (SEN) this Tuesday, as announced by the state company Unión Eléctrica (UNE) on its Facebook page, becoming the last province in the country to restore service after nearly two days without electricity.
The collapse that caused this new massive blackout occurred on Sunday, August 2, at 10:43 PM, when Cuba experienced a total disconnection from the National Electric System, classified as the sixth of 2026.
The restoration became even more complicated when, on the night of Monday, August 3, a frequency oscillation caused another complete outage of the electrical system, wiping out all the progress made up to that point.
The decline was dramatic: Havana, which by Monday morning had barely recovered 14% of the electricity supply —87,480 customers and 78.51 MW with 19 prioritized hospitals—, dropped to a coverage of only 3.8%, with 33,182 customers, 11 circuits, and six active substations.
The reconnection process included the start-up of units in the thermal power plants Ernesto Guevara, Máximo Gómez, and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, but the eastern part of the country, particularly Santiago de Cuba, was the last to be addressed.
The magnitude of the structural deficit explains why each collapse takes so long to resolve: for the Sunday night peak, the UNE projected an impact of 2,195 MW with only 1,035 MW available against a maximum demand of 3,200 MW, resulting in a deficit of nearly 68%.
Santiago de Cuba has been enduring months of energy suffering that go far beyond this episode.
In March, the local electric company admitted to 24-hour blackouts and promised just two hours of service "when possible." In June, it reorganized the outages, providing each neighborhood with one or two daily electricity periods lasting between one and two hours.
On July 30, a fire at the Santiago Este Substation further worsened the situation by forcing an emergency shutdown of the supply in four circuits across the city.
Accumulated desperation has triggered a wave of protests. Santiago de Cuba recorded potbanging on July 3, July 26, and July 30, with slogans of "electricity, food, and freedom."
The regime responded with the militarization of Santa Úrsula Park and the deployment of armed forces to intimidate the demonstrators.
This new collapse adds to a relentless series: on July 14, Cuba had already experienced its fifth total blackout in just eight days, and in June, there were 107 protests recorded across the country.
With the reconnection of Santiago de Cuba this Tuesday, the SEN is technically restored, but the structural crisis that causes it to collapse time and again remains unchanged.
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