The Thermoelectric Power Plant (CTE) Antonio Guiteras, located in the province of Matanzas and the largest of its kind on the island, unexpectedly left the National Electric System this Tuesday, according to the Cuban Electric Union (UNE).
In a brief note published on its social networks, the UNE assured that “the cause is given by losses of turbine parameters.”
In addition, he pointed out that “work will be done immediately on the solution of the leak in the boiler that had already been detected previously, because of the large consumption of water.”
The output of the CTE Guiteras it puts even more stress on the Cuban electricity system, plunged into a severe crisis largely due to the obsolescence of its generating plants, which causes continuous breakdowns and outages for maintenance.
The breakage occurs just one day after Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and former President Raúl Castro visited the Felton thermoelectric plant in Holguín to check the work being carried out in its two units, currently out of service due to various problems.
The Holguin CTE is the one with the largest generation in Cuba, with around 500 MW if the contribution of its two blocks is added, but at least the second of them will take time to be active again after suffer a fire at the beginning of July.
As for Guiteras, its only unit has an installed generation capacity of over 300 MW, although due to technical difficulties it has lately remained below that figure. Recently this plant had to stop its operations as a result of the fire at the nearby Matanzas Supertanker Base, and since then he had been working with a water consumption higher than normal.
In addition, this year other breakdowns had already left the system and, even, last May was struck by lightning which also caused it to stop working at that time.
Cuba will “minimize” blackouts before the end of the year, but the current situation is tense
With this new outlet, the Matanzas plant joins units 6 and 7 of the CTE Mariel, the unit of the CTE Otto Parellada, units 4 of the CTE of Cienfuegos and Nuevitas, the two units of the CTE of Felton and the unit 6 of the CTE Rente, in Santiago de Cuba, all out of service due to breakdowns according to the UNE.
In addition, unit 3 of CTE Rente is undergoing maintenance, and in distributed generation, 1,085 MW were unavailable due to failure and 489 MW were undergoing maintenance.
With this, and even though unit 4 of the Cienfuegos CTE and unit 6 of the CTE Rente are expected to enter the system at night, the UNE forecast was for a maximum impact of 704 MW in the called night peak, which will now be much higher as a result of the breakdown in the CTE Guiteras.
Effects like this have become common in recent months and result in long blackouts, which motivate social discontent and have made the issue one of the government’s priorities. The Cuban authorities have outlined several strategies for their confrontation —the most recent with a view to reducing power cuts before the end of the year—, without so far being able to alleviate the crisis.
