Antonio Guiteras Power Plant Status Updated After Technical Glitch

The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, which was unexpectedly disconnected from the National Electric System (SEN) on Tuesday morning, may be operational again by the evening of October 7. Journalist José Miguel Solís shared this update on social media, citing engineer Jorge Gómez, the production deputy director at Cuba's largest single-unit power plant, as his source.

In an initial Facebook post, Solís reported that a fault in the automatic control protection system led to the plant's shutdown. The official source clarified that this incident was similar to another that occurred in September, which had previously impacted the SEN, but emphasized that this time they managed to avert a full collapse. The expectation is that the plant will be back online by 10 p.m.

In a more recent update, Solís noted that the restart process has begun now that the issue has been identified. "It may take between two to three hours to resynchronize with the SEN," confirmed engineer Jorge Gómez, the production deputy director at the island's largest power block.

Cuba's most significant power plant, Antonio Guiteras, was reported out of the SEN on Tuesday morning, according to a brief announcement by the National Electric Union (UNE) on social media. The UNE simply mentioned that Guiteras experienced a "boiler failure" at 9:28 a.m. local time. Alarmingly, just hours before this, the UNE had already reported the disconnection of Energás Jaruco's Unit 6 at 6:55 a.m. due to "sargassum in the BC-4705 inlet channel."

Prior to these events, the forecast for power outages was 1,740 MW. On the previous day, the service was disrupted for 24 hours and remained unstable overnight. The maximum shortfall from generation capacity occurred at 7:40 p.m. with a demand of 1,765 MW, surpassing planned levels.

Energy production from 32 newly installed photovoltaic solar parks reached 3,271 MWh, delivering a peak power of 591 MW during midday. As of 6:00 a.m., the SEN had a capacity of 1,680 MW against a demand of 2,730 MW, resulting in 1,082 MW being offline due to capacity deficits. An estimated 1,150 MW were affected during midday.

Before the Guiteras and Energás Jaruco Unit 6 outages, other units were also out of service: Unit 2 of the Felton Thermoelectric Plant (CTE), Unit 3 of Santa Cruz, Unit 8 of Mariel, and Units 3, 5, and 6 of the Renté CTE. Maintenance was ongoing for Unit 1 and 2 of Santa Cruz CTE and Unit 4 of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes CTE in Cienfuegos. Additionally, 307 MW were unavailable due to thermal limitations.

Fuel shortages caused 54 distributed generation plants, accounting for 270 MW, and 229 MW were offline due to a lack of lubricant, resulting in a total of 499 MW affected. For peak times, a recovery of 50 MW is anticipated from distributed generation engines currently offline due to fuel issues.

Given these conditions, for the peak period, availability is forecasted at 1,730 MW against a maximum demand of 3,400 MW, leading to a deficit of 1,670 MW. If conditions persist, an outage of 1,740 MW is expected during this period.