About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after the failure of a thermoelectric plant.

Cuba's power grid has ground to a halt for a second time in as many days, leaving 10 million on the island without power and the Caribbean island in a growing sense of crisis.

Cuba's national grid collapsed on Friday, leaving the entire population of 10 million people without electricity and underscoring the precarious state of the Communist-run country's infrastructure and economy.

WHY DID THE GRID COLLAPSE? Cuba's electrical grid and oil-fired power plants are obsolete and crumbling, constructed decades ago and scarcely maintained. And because Cuba produces very little fossil fuel of its own - with limited refining capacity - it depends almost entirely on imports to assure adequate generation.

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.

As electricity was being restored in parts of Cuba following an island-wide blackout, a total collapse of the electrical grid occurred once again.