Cuba’s electrical grid went down Friday after one of the island’s major power plants failed, a day after a massive blackout swept across the Caribbean island and with no official estimate for when service will be restored. The Cuban energy ministry announced that the grid had gone down hours after the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant had ceased operations, at about 11 a.m. local time Friday. It said state-owned power company UNE was using distributed generation to provide power to some areas and that a gas-fired thermoelectric plant was starting operations. Mexico's president slams US aid for Ukraine and sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba But as darkness started to fall, millions of Cubans remained without power. Even in a country accustomed to frequent outages amid a deepening economic crisis, Friday’s supply collapse was unprecedented in modern times, aside from incidents involving intense hurricanes, like one in 2022. Various calls by The Associated Press seeking to clarify the extent of the blackout on Friday weren’t answered. In addition to the Antonio Guiteras plant, Cuba has several others and it wasn’t immediately clear whether or not they remained functional. “The power went out at 8 in the morning and it is now 5 in the afternoon and there is no electricity anywhere,” said Luis González, a 73-year-old retiree in Havana. Early Friday, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero had sought to assuage concerned citizens about the blackout Thursday evening, which was already the nation's worst in at least two years. Officials said that 1.64 gigawatts went offline during peak hours, about half the total demand at the time. Millions were left without power, and on Friday the government implemented emergency measures to slash demand, including suspending classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling non-essential services. “The situation has worsened in recent days,” Marrero said in a special address on national television in the early hours of Friday. “We must be fully transparent ... we have been halting economic activities to ensure energy for the population.” During Marrero's address, he was accompanied by Alfredo López, the chief of UNE, who said the outage Thursday stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residences’ air conditioners, as well as breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities. Changes to electricity rates for small- and medium-sized companies, which have proliferated since they were first authorized by the communist government in 2021, are also being considered, Marrero said. Marrero sought to provide reassurance about the outage, citing an expected influx of fuel supply from Cuba's state-owned oil company. “We are devoting absolute priority to addressing and solving this highly sensitive energy contingency,” Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X. “There will be no rest until its restoration.” The blackout has left millions of Cubans on edge. Thursday night, residents shut their doors and windows they typically leave open at night, and candles or lanterns were visible inside their homes. By Friday night, there was no indication that a solution was imminent. Prolonged electricity outages in the past have affected services like water supply and Yasunay Pérez, a Havana resident, said, with sarcasm, that she’s willing and able to bathe in the sea. “We can use all our survival (skills),” she said.

The Power Division will take action against those responsible for the recent national power grid failure within the next two days. State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said this today following a public meeting at his constituency in Keraniganj, a suburb of Dhaka city. On October 6, the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh formed a seven-member committee to identify the reasons behind the national grid failure that caused a seven-hour blackout across most of Bangladesh. The committee had three days to complete the investigation and submit its report. Referring to it, Nasrul Hamid said the Power Division is yet to receive the written probe report. "However, we were informed that the grid failure was more of a management error," he added.      The state minister said they had asked the Power Division to suggest the names of those behind it. "We will terminate all of them and take divisional action." Nasrul Hamid also hoped that a bilateral contract would be signed with Brunei to import energy from the country. Brunei Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah is now in Bangladesh.  

National power transmission grid failed at 2:05 pm – causing blackout across Bangladesh, except some parts of the north. According to officials at Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB), the transmission line tripped somewhere in the eastern part of the country, especially districts on the east of Jamuna river. Only a few districts in the Rangpur division were out of the power failure, said a top official of PGCB. Read:RMG factories bearing power outages of 4 to 10 hours a day: BGMEA President Following the grid failure, all power plants tripped one after another and electricity supply went off in Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet, Barishal and Mymensingh divisions. BPDB director (Public Relation) Shameem Hasan informed that engineers of both BPDB and PGCB were trying their best to restore electricity transmission. Until 2:45 pm, power supply were restored at a good number of areas in those division. Read: Bulk power tariff hike could be announced within Oct 14 PGCB officials, however, said they could not identify the exact reason and location of the fault that triggered the grid failure. The last incident of national power grid failure in Bangladesh happened in 32 districts on May 2, 2017.