Yucatán Peninsula power outages affect over 3.3 million users

The Yucatán Peninsula has experienced five massive power outages in the last 18 months, affecting more than 3.3 million users. The most recent incident occurred between August 31 and September 1, 2026, when the failure of two high-voltage lines left approximately 745,533 users without electricity for nearly seven hours across Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, and Chiapas.

Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) officials attributed the recent outage to acts of vandalism. Specifically, in Campeche, the theft of cabling was identified as a cause that impacted the surrounding states. Other factors contributing to regional power instability include adverse weather conditions and scheduled maintenance or expansion work on the electrical grid.

Rocío Abreu Artiñano, president of the Energy Commission, noted that there is a significant backlog in electrical infrastructure, particularly regarding transmission lines. While hospitals remained operational using emergency generators, the outages caused disruptions in other sectors, including traffic signal failures and high temperatures in residential areas like Cancún.