Fire at Tallapiedra substation causes Havana blackout
Apr 2025Published 28 Sept 2026
- Where
- Tallapiedra electrical substation, Salud Street, Havana
- Operator
- Electric Company of Havana
- What
- Fire in underground substation
- Cause
- Not reported
What happened
A fire at the Tallapiedra electrical substation on Salud Street in Havana was reported on 13 April 2025 as having occurred that Saturday. The Electric Company of Havana said the fire was in an underground substation and that it left residents of Habana Vieja, Centro Habana, Cerro, 10 de Octubre and Plaza without electricity. The company said it was working to restore supply as soon as possible. The same report described a wider strained day on Cuba's National Electric System, with an estimated peak impact of 1,560 MW, and said that 30.5 per cent of Havana's demand was then being met. It did not report a cause, injuries, or when supply was fully restored.
Contributing factors
Not reported. The article places the outage against an already stressed national system but does not state why the substation caught fire.
Lessons learned
- An underground substation fire can cut power across several districts at once, so operators should keep isolation and multi-district restoration plans ready.
- A local substation fault during an already strained system adds to a wider deficit, so site repair and system balance must be managed together.
Not yet known
- Cause of the fire
- When supply was fully restored
- Any injuries reported
This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.
Source
Published 2026-09-28. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.