22OCT

Fire hits Cuban power plant in Mayabeque

3 min read

17:12UTC

Fire broke out in Unit 1 at CTE Ernesto Guevara on 16 October, the same morning UNE forecast a 2,160 MW evening shortfall.

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Key takeaway

UNE forecast 740 MW of supply against 2,900 MW of evening demand on 16 October.

Fire broke out at 06:55 on Friday 16 October in Unit 1 of the thermal power plant at Santa Cruz del Norte, in Mayabeque province, known as CTE Ernesto Guevara (CTE stands for central thermo-electric station). UNE, the state grid operator, blamed an oil leak at the front of the rotor and reported no injuries⁠¹.

UNE put national availability at 06:00 at 740 MW (million watts) against 2,260 MW of demand. For the evening peak it forecast the same availability against 2,900 MW of demand, a 2,160 MW deficit. At that forecast, roughly three quarters of evening demand would go unserved. On 15 October, the day before the fire, power was cut somewhere on the island for all 24 hours.

Santa Cruz units 1 and 2, the Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas province, unit 2 at CTE Felton, the plant whose fault split the east in August, and two units at CTE Antonio Maceo in Santiago, known as Renté, were all broken down at once. Solar peaked at 581 MW, below the 758 MW record of July.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Most of Cuba's electricity comes from a small number of large, old oil-burning power stations. Early on 16 October a fire started in one of them, the Ernesto Guevara plant at Santa Cruz del Norte, east of Havana. The state power company said leaking oil near a spinning part of the generator caught fire, and nobody was hurt. That morning Cuba could produce only about a third of the electricity people needed, because several other plants were also broken. The evening shortfall was forecast to be even larger, so most homes faced long blackouts.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Most of Cuba's firm generation comes from a few large oil-fired thermal plants, so the loss of one unit removes a large share of supply. On 16 October Santa Cruz's units 1 and 2, the Antonio Guiteras plant, unit 2 at Felton and two Antonio Maceo units in Santiago were all out together.

Solar parks cannot fill the evening peak: the 581 MW solar maximum on 16 October came at midday, below July's record, hours before the evening peak.

Power was cut somewhere on the island for all 24 hours of 15 October, so the fire struck a system with no slack left to lose.

What could happen next?

Consequence
With six thermal units broken down together, evening deficits above 2,000 MW are likely to persist until repairs return units to service.
Risk
Fire damage at Santa Cruz could keep unit 1 out for months, removing capacity close to Havana.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: South Africa's Eskom ran ageing coal units with deferred maintenance through 2022 and 2023, and unplanned breakdowns forced stage 6 load-shedding, with up to 6,000 MW cut at peak. Breakdowns, not fuel, set the size of the shortfall.

Counter-parallel: In October 2021 Lebanon's two largest plants, Zahrani and Deir Ammar, shut down when they ran out of fuel, and the national grid went dark for about a day. There the plants worked and the fuel was missing; Cuba now faces both failures at once.

UNE's evening forecast of 740 MW available against 2,900 MW of demand left a deficit of 2,160 MW, so roughly three of every four megawatts Cubans wanted at peak would go unserved. Private businesses that run on generators pay for diesel bought at informal-market dollar prices.

Structurally, a fire in a turbine hall can mean months of repair rather than days. Each lost unit raises the share of demand that must be met by imported diesel in distributed generators, which is the fuel the US is now trying to stop at sea.

Consensus view: Cuba's Ministry of Energy and Mines has blamed its breakdowns on thermal units run long past their overhaul cycles on heavy domestic crude, which fouls boilers and turbines. UNE's 16 October list supports that reading: six thermal units broken down at once, three more in maintenance and 394 MW lost to thermal limitations.

Counter-view: Economists in the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), a US-based network, argue that age is the symptom and money is the cause. A unit that trips waits weeks for imported parts paid in hard currency, so the breakdown count tracks Cuba's foreign-exchange shortage more closely than the calendar age of its plants.

Key tension: Whether new financing for parts could restore enough thermal capacity quickly, or whether the fleet has reached the point where repairs only buy weeks.

Sources:Cubadebate

Mentions:CTE Ernesto Guevara →UNE →Antonio Guiteras →CTE Felton →Santiago de Cuba →Havana →Matanzas →Lebanon →South Africa →Cuba →Mayabeque →CTE Antonio Maceo →Ministry of Energy and Mines (Cuba) →Santa Cruz del Norte →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Cuba opens oilfields, US cuts dollar routes

Cubadebate· 22 Oct 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Felton fault splits Cuba's east again

CTE Felton, whose August fault split the east, still had a unit broken down when the Santa Cruz fire hit.

Occurred 27 Aug 2026

Read story →

This Event

Fire hits Cuban power plant in Mayabeque

The fire struck while units at Santa Cruz, Antonio Guiteras, Felton and Renté were already broken down at once.

Different Perspectives

UN General Assembly

The Assembly passed last year's resolution against the US embargo by 165 votes to 7, with 12 abstentions, and votes again on 28 October. That count is the baseline against which Havana's lobbying claims and Washington's pressure will be measured.

Mexican Navy (Secretaría de Marina)

A Mexican Navy team inspected Grace at Progreso and found fuel in its ballast tanks, according to the US Coast Guard. The account of Mexico's role comes from Washington; the Mexican government's own position on the stop is not on record in the sources reviewed.

Pedro Monreal, independent Cuban economist

Monreal says the gazette contains no rule for the exchange-house licence ADT 64 received, so nobody knows how a second firm could apply. He says a representative rate would need at least ten houses in five provinces, Havana included.

Prisoners Defenders and OCDH (Madrid-based exile monitors)

Prisoners Defenders counted a record 1,351 political prisoners at the end of September, and OCDH logged at least 344 repressive actions that month. OCDH asked the European Union on 11 September to investigate possible trafficking in Cuba's medical brigade in Italy.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier

Uthmeier announced a no-bond state warrant for Raúl Castro on 19 October over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, after reopening the state investigation last year. The four men killed flew for a Miami exile group, and the warrant restricts Castro's travel rather than reaching him in Cuba.

Cuban government (Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla)

Rodríguez said on 21 October that Washington is pressing governments to abstain or leave the hall in the 28 October UN vote and called Florida's Raúl Castro warrant worthless. Havana is presenting its October oil and trade rules as openings and the US measures as an energy blockade.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.