New Delhi, March 9 -- Cuban officials said they expect to restart a large thermoelectric plant on Saturday after it shut down earlier in the week, sparking a massive blackout.

Felix Estrada Rodriguez, a top engineer at Cuba's Electric Union, told state-owned Canal Caribe that the Antonio Guiteras plant should be operating by Saturday afternoon.

Crews have repaired a broken boiler at the plant that caused the outage on Wednesday, leaving millions without power in the island's western region.

Estrada Rodriguez said it was a slow process that had to be done safely.

"It is a confined space with a high temperature," he said.

Cuba's Electric Union said in a statement Saturday that only 1,000 megawatts of power were available, less than hal...