A month after his previous departure, the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant disconnected again this Friday from the National Electric System (SEN), at a time when eastern Cuba remains largely off as a result of Hurricane Melissa.
According to the Electrical Union (UNE)this new disconnection seeks to “solve urgent defects” in the main generating block of the island, which is scheduled to be closed by the end of this year. capital maintenance which should last for around six months.
A second publication The entity specifies that the actions that will be carried out in Guiteras will be “aimed at recovering power” and that the stoppage should last four days. Consequently, its synchronization is scheduled for next Tuesday.
For his part, journalist José Miguel Solís said in his Facebook profile that the central objective of this stop is “to reduce the loss of water in the boiler.” “We will work on repairing the high-temperature superheater and there will be almost 400 corrective tasks,” he added.
The communicator, who usually reports on the situation of the Matanzas plant, confirmed that it is the “last maintenance before the start of the general one, scheduled for December”, a “deep intervention” that should bring the Matanzas plant up to 310 MW of power.
Beyond Guiteras
The disconnection of Guiteras for four days will increase the generation deficit in the country and, with it, the blackouts in the territories that remain connected to the SEN after Melissa.
In recent days, along with the complex recovery work on the electrical infrastructure in the eastern zone, outages from other generating plants have continued to occur and chronic problems with fuel have increased again.
This Friday, six thermal units were out of service. Although already in the morning block 5 of Nuevitas was connectedthe departure of Guiteras will deepen the deficit, which will also add more than 600 MW lost due to thermal limitations.
Another 723 MW will not be produced during the day due to lack of fuel and lubricants in distributed generation. Of these, only 40 MW will be recovered for the night peak, when generation should reach 1,495 MW.
Meanwhile, the maximum impact predicted by the UNE at night is 1,405 MW, which in practice means that around half of the country connected to the SEN at that time will be in the dark.
However, still today more than 300 MW were affected in eastern Cuba by the ravages of Melissa, so in practice there will be many more Cubans turned off at that time. And their number could even increase if a breakage occurs or demand exceeds the official estimate.
