According to the Cuban Energy Ministry, power was out across the entire island of Cuba on Friday, impacting the population of 10 million people, after one of its main power plants failed.

The government had tried to keep the lights on earlier in the day by closing schools and having most civil servants stay home to save energy. But that wasn't enough and at 11 a.m. the largest power plant went offline, resulting in a grid failure.

The president of the communist-ruled country, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on

The Cubans have been struggling with recurring power outages for months. In some provinces outside the capital Havana, many people experienced power outages that lasted up to 12 hours at a time.

Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on Thursday blamed deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand from the Cuban population for the ongoing power outages.

While the demand for electricity has increased, the supply of oil is severely limited. Cuba's ally and main oil supplier, Venezuela, has reduced the amount of its shipments to the island. Oil deliveries from other countries such as Russia and Mexico have also fallen sharply.

Authorities said they did not know how long it would take to restore power.

This particular moment worries many Cubans. While walking in a Havana neighborhood, people expressed concern about the situation and one resident said they felt the country had reached the “bottom of the barrel.”

“This is unbelievable,” said a Havana resident who declined to give his name. “I don’t see a solution to this problem.”

A woman in a neighborhood in Old Havana said she feared the situation could get worse. “It concerns me greatly that we may not have reached the bottom of this electricity crisis yet,” she told NBC News.

The Cuban government has long blamed the decades-old U.S. embargo on the island for many of its economic deficiencies. Former President Donald Trump tightened sanctions during his time in office and the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the island's tourism industry, one of the state-dominated economy's most lucrative sources of revenue.

The economic crisis has already made life difficult for the average Cuban, with shortages of food, medicine and fuel.