Cuba’s decrepit electricity grid suffered 188 days of significant blackouts in 2004, 224 in 2005, 3 in 2006, and 0 in 2007. This dramatic improvement was due to a nationwide efficiency program, a crash program of switching to a majority of distributed generation, and reorganizing grid architecture around islandable netted microgrids. This success could be instructive for failing grids like those in Iraq and Afghanistan