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The Electric Union (UNE) announced this Friday the disconnection of two thermoelectric plants from the National Electroenergetic System (SEN): the and the CTE Antonio Guiteras due to a leak in the boiler.
The official Facebook post from the UNE was brief: “CTE Máximo Gómez 8 has gone offline for unknown reasons and CTE Antonio Guiteras due to a water leak in the boiler.”
For the Guiteras, this is the thirteenth outage of the SEN so far in 2026, a figure that illustrates the chronic instability of the country's most powerful plant, located in Matanzas.
The most striking aspect is the brevity of its last connection. The thermoelectric plant had been reconnected to the system on June 4 at 7:48 in the morning, after returning on June 3 at 9:33 a.m. following its twelfth outage. In other words, it did not manage to complete 24 hours connected before failing again.
Cubans responded with a mix of irony and exhaustion in the comments of the post.
"It's Friday and the Guiteras knows it," wrote one user. Another noted: "The Guiteras always comes out on Fridays," to which someone replied: "She takes the whole weekend off."
The recurrence of failures in the boiler did not go unnoticed. "The boiler is a sieve," summarized one commentator. Another was more forceful: "Guiteras is more unstable than the price of the dollar in El Toque."
Several users noted that the ship had arrived the day before and had already departed again. "It arrived yesterday and goodbye today," wrote one. "I knew it wouldn't last 24 hours, I said it, place your bets," added another.
In 2026, the Guiteras has repeatedly failed. On March 4, due to a leak in the boiler, causing a blackout from Las Tunas to Pinar del Río; on May 5, due to a boiler malfunction; on May 14, due to another leak; on May 24, due to a pore in the economizer; and on May 30, it experienced another incident less than 48 hours after being reconnected.
Regarding the CTE Máximo Gómez, located in Mariel, Artemisa, the UNE did not provide any explanation for the outage of its unit 8.
The plant, built with Soviet equipment and with a total capacity of up to 600 MW distributed across eight blocks, had already reported failures in units 6 and 8 within a national deficit of almost 2,000 MW reported the day before.
A comment on the UNE's post encapsulated the widespread sentiment with bitter irony: "How wonderful that they were able to escape the system."
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