Power failure darkens extensive area across Cuba

[Sandokan]

Power failure darkens extensive area across Cuba
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-cuba-blackout-idUSBRE88902T20120910?feedType=RSS

HAVANA | Sun Sep 9, 2012 10:43pm EDT

HAVANA (Reuters) - A large swath of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Sunday night in a widespread power failure, the cause of which was not disclosed.
Electricity went out from the city of Ciego de Avila in southeastern Cuba all the way to Havana, 250 miles to the northwest, and beyond to the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio.

Phone calls around the island indicated power was returning in many areas, but not yet in the Cuban capital, which is the Communist country's biggest city with 2.2 million people.

There were unconfirmed reports that the outage was caused by the failure of a generating plant in Cienfuegos on Cuba's southern coast.

The blackout affected near 5 million people, around 45% of the population of 11.2 million, from Ciego de Avila to Pinar del Rio. This is the worst blackout in the last ten years. It looks like the beginning of another energy crisis. A physical manifestation/of what has been going on in Cuba since the 50’s when the Castroit regime took political power.

 

[Sandokan]

Electrical energy is the most accurate indicator of the general development of an economy. Each 200 annual kilowatts hour of electricity produced is equivalent to the working capacity of a worker. In 1958 according to the records of the Cuban Electric Company, there were 732.000 subscribers, which consumed 11.8 million MW-hours per capita, per year. This ranked Cuba 25th in the world among 124 countries, and first in Latin America. The world mean average was 10 megawatts and only 29 countries, Cuba among them, were above this average. (Norton Ginsburg, Atlas of Economic Development, Table 35, 1961).

 

[Sandokan]

Fidel Castro affirmed that “Cuba will become in 2006 an energetic model for the world, from the application of new concepts in the field of power generation,… By mid of 2006 we will have more than enough electricity .... We have secured four times the electrical generation capacity that the country is going to need”, published by the Granma Newspaper on December 24, 2005. As he suggested 2006 was designate “The Year of the Energy Revolution.”

In May 2009 Raúl Castro announced “exceptional measures” to reduce power consumption and warned that blackouts are inevitable if saving goals are not achieved.

 

[Pinkie]

Sandoken, I am no fan of Castro, but the fact that a power outage occurred doesn't seem like a valid basis for criticizing his regime. The eastern US is as vulnerable (or moreso) to a power outage today than it was in the 1965, when human error plunged 30 million Americans and Canadians into blackness for 12 hours.

Northeast blackout of 1965 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[apdst]

Sandoken, I am no fan of Castro, but the fact that a power outage occurred doesn't seem like a valid basis for criticizing his regime. The eastern US is as vulnerable (or moreso) to a power outage today than it was in the 1965, when human error plunged 30 million Americans and Canadians into blackness for 12 hours.

Northeast blackout of 1965 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cubacoms are living in 1965? Plenty to criticize, there.

 

[Sandokan]

In 2012 the blackouts and rationing of electricity are still in place in the island, despite the micro generators incorporated into the national grid in 2006, a short-term solution since they are usually used in emergencies cases and are expensive. Power outages continue to occur almost in a daily basis after Fidel Castro announced they would disappear thanks to the Energy Revolution. This is due to the deterioration of the existing power plants, losses in transmission and distribution lines, and the decrease of the energy produced by micro generators. According to the Cuba’s National Statistic Office (ONE), the generation capacity of the micro generators capacity had diminished 11% from 2010 to 2011. Should be over 20% by now.

The so call triumph of the energy revolution that was so much talked of, couldn’t prevent the ongoing blackouts and much less this huge one, another big failure of the Castroit regime.