Power plant failure triggers blackout across cash-strapped Cuba

Cuba was racing Friday to restore electricity after the failure of the island’s biggest power plant caused a nationwide blackout, coming on the heels of weeks of extended outages across the cash-strapped country.

The capital Havana came to a virtual standstill as schools closed, public transport ground to a halt and traffic lights stopped functioning.

The head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Lazara Guerra, said the process of restoring power to communist Cuba’s 11 million inhabitants was in its early stages.

“Currently, we have some level of electricity generation” that will be used to start up power plants in several regions of the country, he added.

Guerra previously told state media that the power system had collapsed due to the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants.

The blackout followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces, which prompted Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on Thursday to declare an “energy emergency.”

The government on Thursday suspended all non-essential public services in order to prioritize electricity supply to homes.

Schools across the country have now been closed until Monday. Authorities in Havana said hospitals and other essential facilities, which are powered by generators, would remain open.

“This is crazy,” Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old retiree living in central Havana, told AFP.

“It shows the fragility of our electricity system… We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country, we are living day-to-day.”

– ‘They’ve messed up’ –

Barbara Lopez, a 47-year-old digital content creator, fumed that she had “barely been able to work for two days and now this: what do I do?

“It’s the worst I’ve seen in 47 years,” she said. “They’ve really messed up now… we have no power or mobile data.”

For three months, Cubans have been battling chronic blackouts that had become longer and more frequent.

The national energy shortfall has hovered at around 30 percent, but on Thursday it rose to nearly 50 percent of the island’s needs, causing widespread frustration and anger.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X Friday that the government would “not rest” until the lights were back on.

He blamed the situation on Cuba’s difficulties in acquiring fuel for its power plants, which he attributed to the tightening of a six-decade-long US trade embargo under former president Donald Trump.

– Worst crisis in 30 years –

Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a key ally in the early 1990s — marked by sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and even water.

With no relief in sight, many Cubans have emigrated.

More than 700,000 entered the United States between January 2022 and August 2024, according to US officials.

While the authorities chiefly blame the US embargo, the island is also feeling the aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic battering its critical tourism sector, and of poor economic mismanagement.

To bolster its grid, Cuba has leased seven floating power plants from Turkish companies and also added many small diesel-powered generators.

In July 2021, blackouts were the spark for an unprecedented outpouring of public anger.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting “We are hungry” and “Freedom!” in a rare challenge to the government.

One person was killed and dozens were injured in the protests. According to the Mexico-based human rights organization Justicia 11J, 600 people detained during the unrest remain in prison.

In 2022, the island also suffered months of daily hours-long power outages, capped by a nationwide blackout on September 27 caused by Hurricane Ian.

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zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
November 22, 2024
2 views

Utility Companies Are Not On Our Side

Authored by Linnea Leuken & H. Sterlin Burnett via RealClearPolitics,

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

Under the banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim of providing reliable, affordable power – the rationale for the electric utilities’ monopolies in the first place – was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back, arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded assets.

Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power. In addition, they passed on the costs of the expanded grid to ratepayers and taxpayers. Effectively, elected officials and the PUCs, with a wink and a nod, indemnified utilities for power supply failures, allowing utilities to claim that aging grid infrastructure and climate change were to blame for failures rather than the increased percentage of intermittent power added to the grid at their direction.

Today, utilities have enthusiastically embraced the push for renewable (but less reliable) resources, primarily wind and solar. PUCs guarantee a high rate of return for all new power source (wind, solar, and battery) installations, which has resulted in the construction of ever more and bigger wind, solar, and battery facilities. The costlier, the more profitable – regardless of their compromised ability to provide reliable power or the cost impact on residential, commercial, and industrial ratepayers.

A new report from The Heartland Institute demonstrates the significant financial incentives from government and financiers for utilities to turn away from affordable energy sources like natural gas and coal, and even nuclear, and instead aggressively pursue wind and solar in particular. All of this is done in the name of pursuing net zero emissions, which every single major utility company in the country boasts about on their corporate reports and websites. Reliability and affordability come secondary to the decarbonization agenda.

Dominion Energy is a good example, as they are one of the most aggressive movers on climate-focused policy. Dominion CEO Robert Blue speaks excitedly about government-forced transitions to a wind- and solar-dominated grid in interviews. During one interview with a renewable energy podcast, he said:

“[S]ometimes the government needs to focus on outcomes. We’re trying to address a climate crisis, and we are going to need to move quickly to do that.” In the same interview, he expressed enthusiasm about federal policy that would achieve a government-directed transition.

And why wouldn’t he? Dominion, like most utilities, is granted government tax credits and guarantees on returns for investing in large, expensive projects like offshore wind, the most expensive source of electric power. The bigger the project, the bigger the profit with guaranteed returns.

Also, onshore wind companies have received special “take limits” from the Fish and Wildlife Service to kill protected bald eagles and golden eagles, while prosecuting oil companies if birds are injured or killed on their sites.

Net zero policies are not the environmental panacea that climate change activists proclaim. Industrial-scale wind and solar use substantially more land than conventional energy resources, disrupting ecosystems and destroying wildlife habitats in the process.

And despite recent technological advances, wind and solar are still not dispatchable resources, meaning they cannot provide consistent power at all times needed. Refuting claims made by environmentalists and utilities that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electric power, costs have risen steeply as the use of wind and solar has increased. Customers of Duke Energy in Kentucky, for example, are paying 78% higher rates in the wake of coal-fired plant closings.

Politicians and utilities are pushing for even more electrification for appliances and vehicles despite the fact that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have repeatedly warned in recent years that adding more demand for electric power while replacing reliable power sources with intermittent renewables is destabilizing the power system.

It appears that the utilities prioritize short-term profits over grid reliability or keeping costs reasonable – and the government officials who are supposed to keep them in check are only encouraging them. It doesn’t need to be this way. The U.S. grid was not always this way. Only in recent years, with the obsessive pursuit of net zero, have rolling black and brownouts become so common.

Today, utility companies are sending lobbyists to conservative policymakers in order to convince them that the utilities have our best interests in mind. Their track record tells another story. Meanwhile, Americans have less reliable electricity at higher costs.

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org, X: @LinneaLueken) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2024 – 06:30