• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 10 / 10 / 2010

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The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant is ready to go back on the grid by the end of October after a substantial overhaul, Granma reported.

The Granma report didn’t provide any details of the project, other than saying that the plant received a new boiler and transformers, and that it will have backup equipment. The 330-mw plant near Matanzas began operating in 1989 with two Japanese-made and two Czech generators.

The power plant was at the center of attention in 2004-05 due to frequent breakdowns that triggered widespread blackouts. In the late 1990s, as domestic oil production increased, the government had retrofitted the boiler systems of all its thermoelectric plants to run on sulphur-heavy Cuban oil, which added strain to the aging, Soviet-era power plants.

The Antonio Guiteras plant was retrofitted in 2002, operating at only 65 percent of capacity since. In 2004, the plant had to be shut down, due to damaged turbines.

In 2005, then-President Fidel Castro overruled engineers and initiated what he dubbed the “energy revolution.” Cuba bought and installed thousands of portable diesel and fuel-oil generators to generate the bulk of electricity, decentralizing the system and demoting thermoelectric plants such as Antonio Guiteras to second priority. At the time, the Cuban government said it would shut down some of the most obsolete power plants.

Since then, the 376-mw Carlos Manuel de Céspedes power plant in Cienfuegos has undergone an overhaul led by Hitachi Power, and Russian operator Inter RAO UES agreed to renovate and operate the 450-mw Máximo Gómez power plant in Mariel.

Source: www.cubastandard.com/2010/10/08/matanzas-power-plant-ready-to-re-boot/