The thermoelectric power plant Antonio Guiteras, located in Matanzas, registered its thirteenth exit from the National Electroenergetic System this Friday in 2026, caused by a new leak in the boiler, and its director acknowledged that they do not have the necessary parts for more extensive repairs.
The shutdown was controlled to avoid fluctuations in the national electrical system, but the incident worsens an already critical situation: the plant had been reconnected just on Thursday at 7:48 AM, after returning on Wednesday from its twelfth outage, which means that it did not complete 24 hours connected before failing again.
The engineer Román Pérez Castañeda, general director of the plant, explained to Radio 26 that the technical decision made is to continue selectively locating the areas of greatest threat in the boiler and repairing them as needed.
"In this context, but also due to the inability to obtain the necessary parts for a more extensive emergency repair, it has been decided to continue the strategy of selectively locating the areas of greatest threat in the boiler and repairing them," stated Pérez Castañeda.
The executive specified that this time assisted cooling of the boiler is not advisable, but the inspection can begin on Saturday night.
He also emphasized that the reported failures did not occur in elements that had been repaired previously, thus ruling out issues with the execution of prior work.
However, the root of the problem is structural: "It is a significant technical challenge to detect hundreds of pipelines that pose a threat, especially since it is impossible to have the necessary amount of chrome steel pipes and there is also no time to properly shape them," the director admitted.
La Guiteras has been without comprehensive capital maintenance for over 15 years, as the last one was carried out in 2010, and it has accumulated nearly four decades of operation since its inauguration in 1988.
Pérez Castañeda himself has acknowledged that the plant needs a shutdown of approximately 180 days for a thorough repair, but the country's energy situation does not allow for it.
By 2026, a general maintenance plan was scheduled to begin, including work on the boiler, generator, turbine, and auxiliary equipment, a goal that recurrent shutdowns have prevented from being achieved.
In parallel, two Cuban thermoelectric plants have gone offline this Friday: the Electric Union also announced the shutdown of the CTE Máximo Gómez unit 8, for unknown reasons, further exacerbating a system that projected a deficit of nearly 2,000 MW during peak hours on Thursday.
The worst deficit recorded so far this year occurred on May 14, when half of Cuba went dark after another system failure, with a deficit of 2,174 MW and only 976 MW available nationwide.
The thirteenth shutdown of the Guiteras in just one year confirms that the strategy of targeted repairs does not address the accumulated deterioration: without the right parts and the time for thorough maintenance, the plant will remain the weakest link in an overstressed electrical system.
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