Antigua was left without power across most of the island on Monday night, after an unexpected system failure disrupted the national electricity supply just before 10 p.m. local time. The Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA), the body responsible for managing the country’s public infrastructure services, has dispatched technical teams to conduct a full investigation and damage assessment following the widespread blackout.
Initial reports from local residents confirmed that neighborhoods spanning the entire island — including Cedar Valley, All Saints, McKinnons, Buckleys, Hodges Bay, Clarkshill, Gambles, Jennings, and Carlisle — lost power almost simultaneously around 9:50 p.m. Many households took to local social media channels to describe the disruption as a total, island-wide outage, though APUA did not officially confirm the full scope of the interruption until an updated statement Tuesday morning.
In an initial public notice released shortly after the outage began, APUA’s Electricity Business Unit acknowledged the unplanned system failure, noting that expert technicians had been mobilized immediately to identify the root cause of the blackout. The authority issued an apology to local residents and businesses for the widespread inconvenience, asking for patience while crews worked to assess the damage and restore service. As of the latest update, investigations remain ongoing, and the trigger for the system collapse has not yet been determined. APUA has committed to releasing additional details, including a timeline for full power restoration, once preliminary assessments are completed.