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The Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant, the largest power generation facility in Cuba, announced this Saturday on its social media that it will remain shut down for 48 hours in a "cooling process" before technicians can access the malfunction, identify it, and repair it.
The announcement, published on the official CTE Facebook page, sparked a flurry of ironic and angry comments from Cuban citizens questioning whether the plant had even gotten warm at all.
«When did it get hot?», asked a user sarcastically. Another was more straightforward: «It's the one that works the least and takes the longest to cool down. Ease up, because the people no longer believe a word you say.»
A third party pointed out the underlying problem: "The truth is, I don't know how those workers are motivated to work knowing that what they will do is for nothing, because the plant doesn't need a band-aid; it requires major maintenance. Everything else is in vain; it can't take any more."
La Guiteras left the National Electric Power System (SEN) on Friday at 06:58, just four days after being reintroduced on June 29.
This is their 17th outage so far this year and the fifth consecutive one due to a failure in the economizer of the boiler, the most deteriorated component of the facility.
The engineer Román Pérez Castañeda, general director of the block, explained that a complete replacement of the economizer is unfeasible at this moment: "It's not that we lack the necessary pipes and the ability to assemble them, but rather that it is an intervention that would take several days, and today, 200 megawatts are crucial."
The immediate plan includes resuming the inspection of the boiler on Sunday morning and estimates the repair will take up to six days starting from 6:00 a.m. on Friday.
The structural deterioration of the plant explains the irony of the Cubans. The economizer has accumulated 38 years of continuous operation in a highly corrosive environment, with damage to more than 500 tubes and between 1,000 and 1,200 weld seams pending.
Specialists estimate that a comprehensive intervention would require a shutdown of at least 180 days, something that authorities have repeatedly postponed. The facility has not undergone significant maintenance since 2010.
The citizens' reaction on Facebook also reflected a broader understanding of the crisis. "The problem isn't the sadly famous thermoelectric plant. It's the other nine that are out of service for various reasons. Guiteras could go into maintenance if it weren't for the fact that the other generating units are also out of service," wrote another user.
And one more summarized the state of the electrical system with a brutal image: «Neurological death and the SEN in massive infarction, and the suffering of the people growing excessively.»
The new breakdown worsened the national electricity deficit to 2,206 MW, just two megawatts shy of the historical record of 2,208 MW recorded on June 25.
As of July 4th, there are 11 thermoelectric units out of service in Cuba, and 106 distributed generation plants halted due to lack of fuel.
Blackouts reach between twenty and thirty hours daily in Havana and up to 87 consecutive hours in Matanzas, where Guiteras itself is located.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, promised capital maintenance for the plant by the end of 2025, postponed it in December citing a "situational problem," and announced it again in April 2026 without setting a specific date.
Meanwhile, Cubans continue to wait, holding onto the same question that encapsulates their despair: "It spends more time cooling down than it does being online."
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