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Cuba's grid goes offline with blackout after a major power plant fails
- OfficeChad 2y ago[dead]
- maxglute 2y agoIMO Cuba has nothing going for it except geography and sugar. - Sugar = historic / principle natural resource exports for FX to fund imports since island has not much else (except doctors) - Geography before USSR = next to US, good for USSR military posture -> support + handouts during cold war - Geography after USSR collapse = nice place to vacation, again FX to fund imports IIRC Castro pivoted from sugar to tourism post USSR collapse... and it worked alright. Look up charts for decline in sugar displaced by more tourism increase post 90s. GDP growing pretty steady. Wasn't going to make Cuba high income, but can kind of see how tourism driven model might work. Problem is of course global drop in demand = bad for tourism. Cuba international arrivals precovid about ~4.5m, last year was ~1.5m = empty FX for imports. The big long term problem with tourism strategy... 300m+ American's not travelling to Cuba. The short/medium term fix is Canadians, who consistuted something stupid like 40% of inbound tourists (~4.5m = ~2m tourists/vistors + ~2.5m stopovers) to Cuba, ~1M+ per year. Canadian tourists down to 600k. Which is partly due to Canadian economy. But also... it's been 20+ years of cheap Canadian flights to Cuba... at some point every Canadian that wants to goto Cuba has gone to Cuba. And really we're talking about 60% of Canadians living ~4 hour flight from Cuba. There isn't another advanced economy in the region to pick up slack. Except US... with even less travel time. So it's true Cuba can trade with lots of countries, many like Canada who despite US alignment, don't agree with US sanctions. But Cuba's got nothing significant to trade (enough to fund FX that can cover imports) for except nice weather, which is constrained to the amount of people who want to pay for nice Cuban weather, which happens to be a lot of Canadians. Everyone else short flight away has nice weather of their own. A Chinese isn't going to pay $1500+ to fly (more importantly) 30 hours to Havanna. If Cuba wants to get anywhere, it needs to make nice with US, and US tourists. Compare to Dominican Repubic... basically Cuba population and ~2M+ extra tourists per year, but that 2M+ are US tourists, and DR per capita is upper middle income. OR Cuba needs to convince PRC to be sugar daddy like USSR. Cuba in mid 2010s imported "only" a couple billion... i.e. it doesn't take much imports in $$$ for the country to not be total shitshow like now. But billion here and there is real money. It's to be blunt, military base the size of US in JP or SKR money (1-4B). PRC currently not interested in that, because that's how you get nukes deployed in SKR and JP, and past history suggest that's how you start WW3. And lets be honest, if this ever happens, US is going to lean HARD on Canada shutdown tourists, and west aligned bloc going to actually come aboard US sanction train.
- wcfields 2y agoAs an American that went to Cuba for tourism during the Obama years, let me say, once you go to Cuba once you’ll decidedly go somewhere else after.
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussion (20 points, 7 hours ago, 15 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41883162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41883162
- throwaway199956 2y agoSome further updates: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cuba-power-grid-1.7356496 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cuba-power-grid-1.7356496 It appears power is being restored atleast in some parts. Also airports and flight operations seems not to have been affected.
- ocschwar 2y agoLead times for new infrastructure on the grid is an 18 month minimum. This is going to stay bad for a long time.
- voidfunc 2y agoMaybe it will lead to regime change then. Cuba deserves better.
- iwontberude 2y agoCouldn't China pull up a big floating power generation barge for them?
- sam1r 2y agoFor situations such as these, I wonder why isn't there a lookup table with key value pairings such as <China, X Billion(s)>
- Scoundreller 2y agoThis is assuming their issue is the electricity plants and not fuel supply
- 2y ago
- vivzkestrel 2y agostupid question: cuba is a hot country that supposedly receives plenty of sunlight throughout the year, why hasn't there been a solar initiative for every house or something along those lines?
- tgcordell 2y agoProbably the same reason it hasn’t happened in the majority of countries with similar solar opportunity.
- geuis 2y agoSolar installations in capital societies have taken off due to initial government and private sector investment. Despite Cuba opening up over the last decade, there's still not good investment infrastructure to support large scale solar and wind installations. In other words, it's still a semi communist government that leans much more towards Soviet style versus China. The article itself talks a bit about how the general electrical infrastructure in the country is aging and needs maintenance and upgrades. Combine the government policies, general economy, hostility to foreign investment, etc and you hopefully get an idea of why solar hasn't had a major impact.
- rapsey 2y agoYou can't just have every house pushing 10 kW of power into a grid that is not provisioned for it.
- Quothling 2y agoI don't think it's a stupid question. Cuba is increasing their solar energy, as far as I know they plan to increase their 200 something MW to 2 or 3 GW over the next 4-5 years. There are a lot of challenges in doing that though, one of them is the US. We build (or buy and upgrade) solar plants around the globe but we wouldn't risk the US market over going into Cuba. I doubt we're the only ones. Then there is the question of funding, which I would guess is an issue if they can't pay for the fossil fuels needed to keep their fossil fuel power plants running. Considering the recent crisis seem to have been caused by lack of maintenance solar is probably a good option for Cuba as it doesn't require much. Once you set up a park it'll work for 25 years at least and even continue working for decades afterwards on tolerable levels. You'll need to do greenfield work and replace a panel once in a while, but a lot of parks can be almost left alone from an engineering perspective. This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support.
- K0balt 2y agoIt’s unfortunate that Cuba is so reliant on inefficient oil fired plants. Solar power could easily cover their needs if it weren’t for the economic and sanctions situation. I feel like we will be seeing this bloom into a more political situation before too long.
- gigatexal 2y agoIt would be a really good opportunity for the US to go and offer to help. It would be huge for diplomacy between the two countries. Send sec. Pete over with his infrastructure expertise and let’s help modernize their grid and build better relations. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste or something along those lines.
- know-how 2y ago[dead]
- einszwei 2y agohttps://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... The best thing US could do is relax the decades long sanctions on Cuba (which almost the whole world opposes)
- perihelions 2y agoHow is it in the US' interest to help a Russian ally operate their oil-fired power plant–one that's running on Russian oil?
- tamaharbor 2y ago1.64 gigawatts!
- lalaland1125 2y agoCuba has been going through a crazy major decline ever since COVID. It's pretty rare for a mostly developed country to collapse into poverty without a war. Roughly 5% of the population is fleeing the island each year: https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article290249799.html https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cub...
- _2d30 2y ago> It's pretty rare for a mostly developed country to collapse into poverty without a war. Since when was Cuba, post Castro, anything other than impoverished?
- ketzo 2y agoThat’s not fundamentally wrong, but you are missing the degree of change. Shit has gotten so bad, so fast, relative to what it was before.
- _2d30 2y agoI'm not missing anything. I was very clearly implying one specific point that Cuba has never been a "mostly developed country" and has been impoverished ever since Castro and the communists took over.
- einszwei 2y agohttps://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoWhat can Cuba offer? Same problem with Haiti, what can Haiti offer? Not even China seems interested in paying peanuts for them (The way they are buying Nicaragua and Venezuela)
- 0xbadcafebee 2y agoCuba's exports are $2B, Haiti's exports are $63M. They are a little different.
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoDid you ask AI about Haiti's exports. 63M might be a monthly average of some year. I think they are higher than $1B Did the same AI tell you about Cuban exports? At least $2B is in the same ballpark, but definitely lower.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 2y agoYou're right, the haiti numbers were way off. According to Haiti's Central Bank, total goods exports in 2022 were 1.07 Billion. GDP per capita estimated at $1,748.3 USD. [1] Cuba is harder to pin down. OEC says they had 1.07 Billion in goods exports in 2022[2], whereas the WTO puts it around 2+ Billion[3]. The World Bank puts GDP per capita at 9,499.6 in 2020 (a bad year)[4], but Cuba doesn't really have a GDP and it changed its monetary system in 2021, so an economist who specializes in Cuba should weigh in here. But in general, even with the lack of transparency on the Cuban economy, it's quite clear that with Haiti's complete breakdown of government and its historically low GDP per capita, Cuba and its people are in a much healthier economic state and are a much more attractive trading/business partner than Haiti. [1] https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market-overview https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market... [2] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub [3] https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm [4] https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago[flagged]
- justinko 2y agoIncompetency 100 times over.
- cottsak 2y agoTurns out a 330MW problem only costs about $300M to solve https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design What a world we live in!
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoRetro cars though
- pack_stimulus 2y agoCommies bringing misery to people unfortunate enough to be subject to their governance: hardly shocking. Commie apologists complaining about US sanctions: pathetic.
- crummy 2y agoI'm not an American so not educated on this. Are the sanctions considered successful? What are their goals?
- Auracle 2y agoThe sanctions are nothing most Americans ever think of, apart from maybe Cuban cigars being exotic or hard to procure - though I feel like that was more of a thing 30+ years ago. The goal was Cuba was openly hostile to the US and so we swung our large economic …stick, around. They took our assets and then held nuclear missiles for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, essentially putting them incredibly close to our shores. They’re lucky the US didn’t do more, frankly.
- g1sm 2y ago> held nuclear missiles for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, essentially putting them incredibly close to our shores. I think those missiles were installed (at least partly) as a response to US deploying nuclear weapons in Turkey (and, to a lesser extent, Italy).
- desperatecuban 2y agoYou are correct. That part is never said.
- FerretFred 2y agoWould it be possible for Cuba to join the United Nations? That might provide some benefit.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y agoI always thought that Ayn Rand was exaggerating when she prophesied that socialism will eventually result in total blackouts. Hope Cubans will some day be free people again.
- frenchman_in_ny 2y agoHopefully there will be some sort of study released relating to the restart of the grid. From memory of the 2003 East Coast Blackout the restart mechanics are fairly complex.