The Electric Union (UNE) announced this Saturday at 15:17 that the partial disconnection of the National Electric System in the eastern region of Cuba has been restored, with a brief message on its Facebook page: “Partial disconnection of the NES in the eastern region restored.”
However, the message leaves more questions than answers. If the "disconnection" is reinstated, when will the connection be restored?
The outage began at 12:46 on the same day when the transmission line 220 kV Nuevitas–Las Tunas electrically isolated five provinces: Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantánamo, with a population of approximately 3.4 million inhabitants. The disconnection lasted for two hours and 31 minutes.
The incident occurred in the context of widespread energy collapse. Since six in the morning, the SEN had already recorded 1,222 MW affected, with a availability of just 1,250 MW against a projected demand of 2,900 MW for peak hours, which amounts to covering only 43% of the country's needs.
Internet users have mocked the news about the alleged restoration of the disconnection. "Good for the disconnection, but what about the electricity?" commented one forum user.
The general director of Electricity, Lázaro Guerra Hernández, had warned that the impacts would remain high throughout the day, although lower than those of Friday thanks to the reinstatement of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant — the largest in the country, located in Matanzas — one unit from Santa Cruz del Norte, and unit 8 from Máximo Gómez.
Even so, the estimated deficit for peak hours reached 1,680 MW, which ensured widespread blackouts across the territory.
This new outage is linked to the massive blackout in the eastern region on Thursday, when a fluctuation in the transmission lines took Unit 1 of the Lidio Ramón Pérez thermoelectric plant in Felton offline, leaving the provinces from Holguín to Guantánamo without electricity.
The 220 kV Nuevitas–Las Tunas line is a critical electrical corridor whose failure could isolate the entire eastern region from the rest of the national system. Its vulnerability reflects decades of underinvestment in transmission infrastructure.
As of 2026, the SEN has recorded at least eight total outages, in addition to multiple regional partial cuts. The longest was on March 16, lasting 29 hours and 29 minutes. The eastern region is consistently the most affected area: on August 27, a fluctuation isolated the network from Las Tunas to Guantánamo, and reconnection did not occur until the next day.
The impacts of the first days of October illustrate the magnitude of the deterioration: on October 1, 2,059 MW were affected, and on October 2, 2,130 MW.
Cubans in the east have been enduring blackouts lasting over 20 hours daily, with the regime failing to present a credible plan for recovering the electrical system.
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