Related videos:
The Electric Union (UNE) announced this Thursday that at 14:48 hours, Unit 4 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Thermoelectric Power Plant, located in Cienfuegos, was disconnected from the National Electric Power System due to a failure in the generator's voltage regulator.
The state-owned company announced the outage with a brief message on its social media: "14:48 Hours: Unit 4 of the CTE Carlos Manuel de Céspedes is disconnected from the electrical system due to a failure in the generator's voltage regulator."
Unit 3 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes thermoelectric plant was synchronized last Tuesday at 8:40 p.m., following the massive blackout on Monday, when Cuba experienced its seventh total disconnection from the national electric system in 18 months and the third in 2026.
The shutdown of Unit 4 in Cienfuegos adds to a long chain of breakdowns that keeps the National Electric System on the brink of permanent collapse.
Moreover, the incident occurs at one of the most critical moments for the Cuban electrical system: just a day after the country recorded a historic deficit of 2,341 MW, and when UNE itself projected a deficit of 2,260 MW for this Thursday during peak hours, with an availability of only 935 MW against a demand of 3,100 MW.
According to the UNE report from this Wednesday, units 5, 6, and 8 of the CTE Máximo Gómez (Mariel), unit 1 of the CTE Antonio Guiteras (Matanzas), unit 6 of the CTE Diez de Octubre (Nuevitas), and unit 2 of the CTE Felton in Holguín were already out of service.
To that figure, the maintenance units are added: unit three from the CTE Habana, unit five from the CTE Nuevitas, and units five and six from the CTE Renté, with limitations totaling 255 MW unavailable.
After the complete blackout on Monday, the national reconnection was completed early Wednesday morning, but the technical restoration did not mark the end of the outages: at six in the morning on Wednesday, the availability was only 1,000 MW compared to a demand of 2,750 MW.
Filed under: