A failure at the Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant left hospitals in Villa Clara without electricity, and the authorities attribute the collapse to “weather incidents.”
14ymedio, Madrid, August 3, 2026 / Just hours after the slow recovery began from Sunday night’s blackout, Cuba suffered another total power outage. Official media reported Monday afternoon that a “fluctuation” caused the system to fail again, undoing the progress made earlier in the day.
“In the process of reestablishing the National Electric System (SEN), existing weather events caused damage to the network, directly impacting the generating units that were online,” reported pro-government journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso on his social media .
Around 5 i the afternon, official media reported: “A new blackout occurred a few minutes ago in the national electrical grid. Despite the progress made today, an oscillation caused the outage.”
Half an hour later, the Electric Union (UNE) reported that the process of restoring the system had begun: “We continue working intensively to reverse this situation and achieve the restoration of the system as soon as possible.”
The new collapse occurred while the National Electric System (SEN) was still recovering from the total blackout that occurred Sunday at 10:43 p.m. During all of Monday, UNE worked to restore service using microsystems and the gradual reintegration of some power plants. Monday’s recovery was very limited. The priority remained ensuring service to hospitals, water pumping stations, and other facilities deemed essential.
A failure occurred at the Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant and as a result, “some of the circuits that had been restored, including those corresponding to hospitals, were left without electricity.”
Around 5:00 p.m., the electric company in Villa Clara reported a failure at the Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant, and as a result, “some of the circuits that had been restored, including those serving hospitals, lost power again.” Social media posts announced that in Villa Clara, a breakdown had “left the Cardiocenter, the Celestino Hernández Cancer Center, and the Santa Clara Military Hospital were left without electricity.”
At the time of the total disconnection, there were 23 substations online in Havana, benefiting 50% of the population and 38 hospitals.
The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas began a cold start on Monday morning to synchronize with the grid overnight. The plant, the country’s largest power generation facility, has suffered from years of deterioration and lack of maintenance, and has broken down more than 20 times this year, so user expectations were minimal.
For its part, the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) reported cell phone service interruptions following a breakdown of the generator that supports one of the main mobile network centers. According to the company, the problems are affecting numbers beginning with the prefixes 52, 509, 598, and 599.
Expert Jorge Piñón, a researcher at the University of Texas, had warned that weather conditions could affect the “islands” that allow for the gradual reconnection of the National Electric System (SEN). The meteorological service had reported cloud cover over much of Cuba, which, in the specialist’s opinion, highlighted “the structural challenge of solar energy without a storage system or transmission lines to distribute the electricity generated by renewables to consumers.”
With this new collapse of the SEN, the process of recovering the electrical system will have to start again from scratch, prolonging the blackout that affects the entire country.
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