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The Lidio Ramón Pérez thermoelectric plant, known as Felton, located in the municipality of Mayarí, Holguín, is back in the headlines due to repeated breakdowns and repair processes that have been affecting its operation for years, worsened since the beginning of 2025.
In recent hours, the Electric Union (UNE) announced on its social media about a malfunction in the boiler of unit 1, which necessitated halting operations and initiating a cooling process on Saturday night, around 11:40 PM.
According to the official communication from UNE, the technical team is conducting repair work and replacing key components, specifically seven mocheta brackets and sixteen welds on the left side wall of the boiler.
The technical director of the plant, Víctor Hugo González Quiala, explained that, in addition to the main intervention, 33 other parallel tasks are being carried out to ensure a safe and sustained restoration of the service.
These new complications add to a long chain of failures and maintenance issues that have characterized Felton's operation throughout the year.
Since January, the plant has faced unexpected shutdowns from the national electrical system (SEN) due to various causes: from false alarms in hydrogen sensors to leaks in boilers and breakdowns in transformers.
Each outage, as acknowledged by the UNE reports themselves, exacerbates the generation deficit that the country suffers, resulting in prolonged daily blackouts in nearly all provinces.
In February, Unit 1 of Felton was temporarily disconnected due to a false alarm in the hydrogen detection system, although it managed to synchronize back to the SEN within a few hours.
In April, a leak in the boiler caused a total shutdown of the plant, and repairs took several days. After the restoration, UNE assured that the thermoelectric plant had undergone a rigorous maintenance process, but just three months later, in July, it went out of service again to address defects in the regenerative air heaters.
The most serious incident of 2025 occurred in September, when a transformer in unit 1 experienced a significant failure, accompanied by hydrogen leaks from the generator. The recovery efforts, according to the information released, included equipment cleaning, inspection of bearings and condensers, and replacement of electrical components.
At the end of that month, the UNE reported that Felton had “woken up synchronized with the system”, although minor breakdowns persisted.
The new setback in October demonstrates that the stability of the plant remains compromised. Images shared by local media and industry workers show metal structures being assembled to support the boiler of unit 2, indicating that the issues extend beyond the currently halted unit.
Felton, inaugurated in 1979 and with an installed capacity of over 500 megawatts, is one of the most important thermoelectric plants in Cuba. However, its more than four decades of operation and the lack of adequate spare parts have made it a critical point in the national electrical system.
Each shutdown at the plant directly impacts the level of scheduled outages by the UNE, which tries to compensate for the deficit with distributed generation and other sources, such as the Mariel thermoelectric plant or the Renté facility.
Meanwhile, the official reports maintain an optimistic tone. “Felton is moving,” wrote the official journalist Emilio Rodríguez Pupo on social media, highlighting the progress of the structure assembly and the efforts of the technical staff.
However, the population perceives the situation differently: each breakdown at Felton means more hours of blackout in homes and less stability in an electrical system already collapsed due to years of deterioration and technological inadequacy.
With current repairs still ongoing and no official date for total reconnection, Felton remains the barometer of the Cuban electrical system: a vital facility operating at its limit and reflecting the deep energy crisis the country is experiencing.
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