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The thermal power plant Antonio Guiteras, the largest electricity generation facility in Cuba, shut down again at midnight on Friday due to water leaks in the boiler, marking its 14th outage from the National Electroenergetic System (SEN) so far in 2026.
The director of the Matanzas unit, Doctor of Sciences Román Pérez Castañeda, confirmed the malfunction and warned that approximately 36 hours of cooling is needed—until noon this Saturday—before entering the boiler, locating the damage, designing the repair, and executing it with quality control and hydraulic testing.
The most concerning thing is that the exact cause of the failure is still unknown.
"It is a technical problem that we will resolve with science and work; that is what we are doing—enhancing control methods and searching for the causes, because right now we do not know the cause of this shutdown," declared Pérez Castañeda to the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
The director ruled out that the workers are responsible for the recurring breakdowns.
"Unfortunately, we have experienced repeated breakdowns, but the workers cannot be blamed, neither for poor operation nor for low-quality work. It has been the result of the continued exploitation of the boiler for a long time, and at this moment, there is a zone that is being damaged at an accelerated rate," he explained.
The plant, which before this shutdown contributed 220 MW to the SEN, is equipped with thickness gauges, ultrasound equipment, and microscopes to diagnose the condition of the tubes, and already has forms that identify the most critical areas.
However, the structural situation is serious: the Guiteras has not received major maintenance since 2010, accumulating 16 years without a thorough intervention, and a comprehensive repair of the boiler would involve more than 500 damaged tubes and between 1,000 and 1,200 welding seams.
Pérez Castañeda himself has acknowledged that the plant requires a shutdown of at least 180 days for a major repair, an option that Cuban authorities have dismissed as it would further worsen the national electricity deficit.
An engineer from the plant admitted on Friday that they do not have all the necessary parts for a more extensive repair, so the strategy has been to make targeted interventions in the most critical areas.
The reintegration into the system is estimated to take between 72 and 96 hours from the stop, as reported by Radio Reloj, and the planned repair includes 95 additional maintenance actions.
The impact of this new outage adds to an already severe electrical crisis: on Friday, the SEN recorded only 1,090 MW available against a demand of 3,050 MW, with a projected deficit of 1,960 MW for peak hours and blackouts of up to 1,990 MW expected for the night.
Despite the technical deterioration, Pérez Castañeda highlighted the commitment of the workers: during the last launch, the operators stayed at the plant without returning to their homes.
"We need to thoroughly investigate the cause; we are observing how the damage occurs, but we must intensify our search for why this type of failure happens; we need to address the cause and definitively resolve the problem," emphasized the director in a statement that summarizes the endless cycle of breakdowns plaguing Cuba's main thermoelectric plant.
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