Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Cuba opens solar park hoping to stave off blackouts

Cuba opens solar park hoping to stave off blackouts

HAVANA – Cuba unveiled a new solar energy park in the capital Havana on Friday, part of an ambitious project to alleviate the communist island’s increasingly desperate struggle with power blackouts.
The dire state of Cuba’s power-generation infrastructure, largely dependent on oil from Venezuela, has seen the country of 10 million people struggle with near-daily outages in some regions in recent months.
In some provinces, electricity access is limited to a few hours a day.
Cuba’s eight outdated thermoelectric plants, most of them online since the 1980s and ‘90s, suffer frequent breakdowns.
Under a US trade embargo since the 1960s and battling its worse economic crisis in decades, the country also uses floating electric plants rented from Turkish companies, and generators fuelled by crude oil Cuba is struggling to pay for.
The government in Havana has said it wants to install at least 55 solar parks by year’s end to generate 1,200 megawatts of power – raising its renewable energy generation from about five to 12%.
The first such park, “the product of collaboration with the sister nation of #China,” according to the presidency, went online Friday.
Another is due next week.
“It’s a beauty,” the office of president Miguel Diaz-Canel added in a post on X, accompanied by images of rows upon rows of shiny solar panels.
The park has a capacity of 21.8 megawatts that will “progressively reduce the annoying blackouts during daylight hours” in the populous Havana municipality, state news portal Cubadebate said of the project.
Earlier this month, the government was forced to shutter schools and close businesses for two days to save energy after electricity supply dropped to half of demand.
By 2030, the country aims to generate more than a third of its electricity from solar parks and other renewable sources. 

– Nampa/AFP