Cuba's national power grid collapsed completely on Tuesday for the third time in nine days and the fifth time since the start of the year, leaving the country's 10 million residents without light or basic means of modern life.

The repeated blackouts come amid the fuel shortage affecting Cuba because of the oil blockade imposed on the island by the United States.

The grid collapsed at 11:05 a.m. local time, or 6:05 p.m. Israel time.

Traffic lights went dark in the capital, Havana, while the hum of generators could be heard in the streets.

“I have no words,” said María Caridad Álvarez, a 62-year-old homemaker.

“When I woke up this morning, the power had come back and I was able to cook beans, but now, as I am leaving, it has been cut off again.

There seems to be no solution.”

Cuba's two previous nationwide blackouts occurred only last week.

On each occasion, the national electricity company required more than 24 hours to restore the grid, even though partial and general blackouts have been almost routine in Cuba for years because of inadequate electricity production.

In recent weeks, residents have voiced growing despair and helplessness over the recurring outages and described their severe effect on morale.

“The energy crisis takes away the desire to live,” said one woman in her 60s.

David Matías Rodríguez, an 82-year-old retiree, said he feared for the three small food items he had in his refrigerator.

In recent weeks, planned power cuts in Havana have lasted more than 30 consecutive hours, while in other provinces they have continued for entire days.

The outages have persisted despite major plans announced two years ago by Cuba's communist government to build solar parks.

Residents of Havana regularly express their anger in the hardest-hit neighbourhoods by setting fire to piles of rubbish or banging pots and pans at night.

“My mother is bedridden and suffers from dementia, and because of these power cuts I had to throw away meat and fish from the refrigerator because everything spoiled,” said Julia Valdés, 70. “This is already the third collapse of the national electricity system in one week.

How much longer will it continue?

We cannot go on living like this.

It is not fair.”

Cuba has faced a severe economic crisis for five years and regularly suffers nationwide or partial blackouts because of decaying infrastructure and fuel shortages.

Its situation has worsened further since the United States invaded Venezuela on January 3, removed President Nicolás Maduro and brought the interim government there under its control, effectively taking charge of Venezuela's oil sector, which had supplied most of Cuba's required fuel until then.

Since the January invasion, the United States has prevented Venezuela from sending Cuba the fuel needed to operate its generators.

Those generators supplement the output of the island's seven aging thermal power plants, which suffer frequent malfunctions and are often taken offline for maintenance.

Following pressure from Trump, Mexico later also stopped shipping oil to the island.

Cuba's electricity company says the fuel shortage makes the local grid more vulnerable to faults and slows restoration work because it prevents the use of emergency generators.

Since January, Washington has allowed only one Russian oil tanker to reach Cuba, in March.

It carried 100,000 tonnes of crude oil, but those reserves have since been exhausted.

U.S. President Donald Trump considers the communist island, located 150 kilometres from the coast of Florida and allied with Moscow for decades, an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security.

He has warned several times in recent months that he might order the U.S. military to “take it by force.”

Cuba and the United States have held talks in recent months described as difficult.

At the end of June, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez acknowledged that there had been “no progress” in the negotiations between the two sides.