April 05, 2006
APAGONES?
Dont worry about the blackouts, Comrades. fidel will be lighting your candles!
In a desperate and last ditch effort to keep the Cuban people from griping about the heat and lack of power this summer, fidel castro has unveiled a new plan to generate electricity throughout the island: Generators.
HAVANA - Cuba is racing to install thousands of container-sized diesel generators across the island to avoid another situation like the one last summer when widespread blackouts fanned popular unrest.President Fidel Castro has taken personal responsibility for what he calls an "energy revolution" prompted by widespread complaints about the failings of Cuba‘s obsolete power plants.
His supporters say the first-of-its-kind energy plan is a stroke of audacious genius. His critics see it as a desperate blunder.
The generators are being grouped in clusters and connected to the electrical grid so they can feed the national system or operate independently in all 14 provinces.
"The unit consists of 32 generators in eight groups ... capable of generating 60.4 megawatts," state-run news agency AIN said of one cluster in eastern Holguin province.
Now, Im no electrician or electrical engineer or anything, but I had to run a generator for power for two weeks last year after Hurricane Katrina and all I can say is that it was a nightmare. First you have to have enough fuel and it needs to be nearby. You have to have oil and change the oil every certain amount of runtime hours. You have to have good plugs, the proper gap. Proper ventillation. Have to make sure you dont overload the thing. Etc.. And that was for a small 6500 Watt generator. Imagine what the maintenance on a megawatt diesel generator must be, if it is to be running constantly and powering a city?
LOGISTICS NIGHTMARECuba is spending a further $250 million to replace old transmission lines, transformers and breakers so the grid can handle increased demand as Cubans still cooking with kerosene and wood fires go electric.
Since the generators began to arrive, blackouts have all but disappeared. But the real test will come with the hot summer months when demand peaks.
Cubans give the energy plan mixed reviews.
"Those of us who support the revolution support the plan; those who do not, as always, think it is crazy," a Communist Party militant said.
"There is no doubt it is an ingenious, though expensive, way for them to quickly solve their immediate problems," a Western diplomat said.
"The question we all have is what will happen in a few years. Generators have never been used as the basis of a power system before, anywhere," he said.
Cuban officials brush off such concerns and insist the strategy has been well thought out.
But foreign electrical engineers say it is a recipe for a logistics nightmare as thousands of generators will have to be constantly supplied with diesel and their engines serviced.
Cuba would have been better off in the long run building generating plants, an Italian engineer said.
(emphasis mine)
Perhaps the reason that generators have never been used in this manner is because it's absurd. This, like every other heralded plan from La Revolucion, is a mere Bandaid on the gaping wound that is Cuba's infrastructure. It is not only shortsighted, but a complete waste. It's the electrical version of the Mini-cow. The smoke and mirrors approach to keeping the Cuban people from complaining about their reality.
Here's a sample of that electrical reality, from Cienfuegos.
Posted by Val Prieto at April 5, 2006 09:15 AM
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Comments
Hasta cuando Dios? Hasta cuando.
Posted by: Tati ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 5, 2006 10:36 AM
Let's hope that while the Cuban masses continue enjoying their "bread and circus," some patriots will sabotage those generators.
I knew a Cuban army mechanic who back in the 1960s used to sabotage the new Russian military trucks that arrived on the island. He would fill the engines with a mixture of half oil and half kerosene. Three months later, after the damage had been done to the engine, he would change the mixture and fill it with regular oil. Russian technicians were flown to the island to examine why so many new truck engines had burnt out. They concluded that Russian engines just could not stand the heat of the tropics.
Posted by: delacova at April 5, 2006 10:51 AM
Even without sabotage, I'd count on half or better of the generators to be out of service inside of three months. From the article, it doesn't sound like there's any mechanism for load-balancing on the transmission grid, so expect it to be beat all to Hell by surges and sags - which will then be blamed on 'counter-revolutionaries'.
Posted by: aelfheld at April 5, 2006 11:22 AM
You left out the best part. In the last paragraph of that story fidel claims that with the generators cuba will be less vulnerable when the Yankee invasion comes because power generation will be spread throughout the island instead of only in 7 places.
The Yankee invasion that never materializes. They have been waiting for godot for 47 years.
Posted by: conductor at April 5, 2006 11:27 AM
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