The Antonio Guiteras Thermal Power Plant, the largest single block of electricity generation in Cuba, is operating at the limit of its physical capacity while authorities delay its major repairs to avoid worsening the crisis of blackouts that afflicts the population with interruptions lasting over 24 consecutive hours.
The general director of the plant, Román Pérez Castañeda, acknowledged in an interview with the official newspaper Girón that the decision to keep Guiteras operational was made collectively by the management of the power plant, the Electric Union, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Communist Party, and the Government.
"From a material standpoint, for over a month we have been in a position to make a massive change regarding the economizer. But summer has arrived, the World Cup is on, and the Cuban people have a strong desire for a well-deserved vacation, without significant electrical impacts in their homes; and the extended outage in the yumurino area affects this," Pérez acknowledged.
The power plant in Matanzas is approaching 40 years of operation, a decade longer than the anticipated lifespan of a thermal power plant, while its boiler has accumulated over 15 years without any major repairs.
The latest outage of the Guiteras occurred at 1:07 AM on July 26 due to a leak in the economizer. Pérez Castañeda explained that, prior to the economizer failure, technicians had already detected an issue in a tube of the low-pressure superheater.
The steam leak allowed the plant to continue operating, albeit with a high water consumption, but the new leak forced a shutdown due to two simultaneous failures.
At each stop, more than 200 jobs are performed in the specialties of automation, electrical, and mechanical. Only the repairs of the economizer and the superheater required around 50 workers, organized in continuous shifts over 24 hours.
The conditions inside the boiler are extreme. According to the director, workers must work hunched over, sitting, or lying down in cramped spaces, exposed to soot and ambient temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
The teams take turns every one or two hours to go out, hydrate, and return.
A technical report prepared with the support of the University of Matanzas and the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana (Cujae) concluded that the economizer material "has undergone total aging and has lost all its properties to endure prolonged operation."
The plant management acknowledged that they initially did not understand the severity of the deterioration.
After replacing the most damaged pipes, the technicians discovered small holes in the weld seams, some as small in diameter as a sewing needle. The high-pressure water leak was damaging the neighboring pipes.
The plant eliminated nearly 400 welding seams, but the failure mechanism shifted to other areas, making it necessary to replace the economizer tubes on a large scale.
Pérez Castañeda assured that they already have the necessary materials for that intervention.
The high heater is in an even worse material condition. However, its leaks are steam, and they do not immediately disconnect the unit, unlike the water leaks from the economizer, which necessitate taking the plant out of service.
The major repair cannot be carried out without replacing that reheater, one of the components that is still missing.
Contracts for electrical and automatic specialties necessary for carrying out the maintenance tasks are also still pending.
Pérez attributed these shortcomings to the U.S. sanctions and stated that foreign companies, including some from Germany and France, have refrained from working with the plant.
According to what was explained, banking and financial restrictions make it difficult to even transfer payments to suppliers willing to provide parts or technical assistance.
The shortage of components is compounded by the exodus of qualified personnel. "In the past, at our thermoelectric plant, having 20 or 25 highly skilled welders, capable of welding under any conditions and with a variety of materials, was not uncommon. Nowadays, gathering seven or eight is almost impossible," he noted.
The outages of the SEN itself also exacerbate the deterioration of the plant. During one of the latest disconnections, the unit was operating at 200 MW and automatically surged to 356 MW.
Although the protection systems prevented damage to the turbine and generator, the imbalance caused an overpressure in the boiler that, according to the director, resulted in the most recent breakdowns by overloading already weakened pipes.
A limited intervention in the economizer would require around 20 days, but management believes that merely repairing this component would not solve the problem, as the superheater also exhibits critical points with a high likelihood of failure.
The capital repair would require keeping the plant out of service for approximately six months.
The authorities, however, have not yet set a date due to the impact that prolonged disconnection would have on an electrical system that, in the days prior, recorded availability close to 1,100 MW against demands of around 3,200 MW.
"What we are doing today is extending the operational period of the plant," summarized Pérez Castañeda, in a phrase that encapsulates the official strategy: to sustain a severely deteriorated infrastructure to prevent an immediate deepening of the blackouts.
"The decision for a six-month halt, as a major repair requires, cannot be taken lightly. We still do not have a date," he concluded.
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