Monday, 21 September 2026

Cuba's national power grid collapsed on Friday, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity, according to reporting carried by myMotherLode and the McAlester News-Capital.

The country's Ministry of Energy and Mines announced the islandwide outage on its official X account and said officials had begun "activating service-restoration protocols".

According to the same reporting, Friday's collapse was at least the sixth failure of Cuba's power grid since January.

ACME Solar has commissioned the second phase of its Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project in Rajasthan, adding 52.32 MW of discharge capacity and 209.28 MWh of storage, according to Tradebrains.

Solarquarter reported that Phase II was completed on September 17, 2026, with commercial operation scheduled for September 19, 2026.

The addition lifts total commissioned BESS capacity at ACME Greentech Seventh, a wholly owned subsidiary of ACME Solar, to 105.95 MW and 423.80 MWh, per Solarquarter.

ACME Solar said it expects to commission the remaining BESS capacity tied to the project by the third quarter of the current financial year.

The burned remains of the Moss Landing Power Plant battery energy storage facility caught fire again Friday morning, and Monterey County officials issued a shelter-in-place order in response, according to CalMatters and The Gonzales Inquirer.

North County Fire Protection District Chief Jess Cortez attributed the reignition to roughly 1,500 inaccessible battery modules that remained charged and spontaneously ignited.

Vistra's Moss Landing plant manager, George, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the modules stayed energized from before the original fire, and that the site will not reach zero risk of further flare-ups until it is completely remediated.

The Energy Ministry reported that Cuba's electricity grid fully collapsed on Friday, knocking out power for an island population of roughly 9.4 million. Reuters described the shutdown as unfolding while a US pressure campaign has largely blocked oil deliveries to the Caribbean's largest island.

The trigger, per authorities, was a fault on high-voltage transmission lines in central Cuba shortly after 2 p.m. local time. Officials traced the cascade to a transmission-line failure in the west, which pulled down the system as far as Matanzas province before the eastern half of the island dropped off.

The Electricity Union confirmed a total disconnection of the National Electric System and began activating recovery protocols. Felix Estrada, an official at Cuba's National Electrical Union (UNE), said gradual restoration of the system was under way.

Reuters counted Friday's failure as at least the sixth partial or total grid collapse in Cuba since January.