Not far from the ruins of a never-completed nuclear power plant, workers are busy installing 44.000 solar panels in Cienfuegos, central Cuba. The island is seeking to reduce its dependence on fuel in an effort to overcome its energy crisis.
Dozens of containers, each with Chinese inscriptions, are lined up not far from the construction site of the "La Yuca" photovoltaic park. Forklifts loaded with solar panels maneuver between the concrete structures where the panels will be installed.
"We're wiring, digging trenches, and installing panels," explains a manager on site. The project is scheduled for completion in May.
The island of 9,7 million people, which remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels to run its eight old power plants and several generators, has embarked on a vast photovoltaic energy production project.
A total of 55 solar parks are expected to be built by 2025. Five are located in the central province of Cienfuegos, a strategic area with an industrial port, a refinery, and a power plant, and which was chosen in the 1980s for an aborted nuclear power plant project.
Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy acknowledged the urgency of the situation: "More than half of all the fuel consumed in the country goes into electricity production," he told the state-run daily Granma.
Fuel purchases represent the largest "bill" for Cuba, "more than food, more than medicine, more than anything," he added.
Cuba's fragile power grid has completely shut down four times in the past six months due to breakdowns or fuel shortages, leaving the entire country without power, sometimes for days.
Support from China
The energy produced by the solar parks will first be fed into the national electricity grid for distribution throughout the country, the authorities said, without necessarily immediately solving the chronic deficits experienced by the area's residents.
Belkys Vila, 59, who sells clothes in her backyard, lives not far from a recently opened solar park in Cienfuegos province, but still spends "more time without electricity (...) than with electricity."
Her neighbor, Juanita Roa, 70, cooks with charcoal. "Here, women get up at XNUMX a.m. to wash and cook" during "the short time there's electricity," she says.
The solar power project involves an investment of several hundred million dollars that the communist island, under American embargo and plunged into a deep economic crisis, launched with the financial support of China.
No investment figures have been made public.
The government plans to produce 1.200 megawatts by the end of 2025, while the country suffers from a daily electricity generation deficit of around 1.500 MW.
Jorge Piñón, a researcher at the University of Texas, welcomes Cuba's goal of producing 12% of its energy from renewable energy by 2025 and 37% by 2030.
However, he questions the lack of "large storage batteries to use solar energy at night" and "balance supply and demand."
"The first storage containers are already in Cuba, but they don't yet have the battery inside," acknowledged Minister De la O Levy.
Cuba has tried to reduce its dependence on oil in the past.
Just 15 kilometers from La Yuca, the imposing dome built to protect what was to be a nuclear reactor appears. On the thick concrete walls, Russian inscriptions are still visible.
Moscow had largely contributed to the financing of the project, which brought Soviet physicists and engineers to Cuba. After the fall of the USSR, the program was abandoned by Fidel Castro (1926-2026).
Eliecer Machin, a physicist trained in the USSR, remembers the "hard blow" of abandoning the project. At 60, he still lives in the "nuclear city" built to house the nuclear power plant's staff, but survives by raising pigs.
