PowerMarketers.com.
June 19, 2001.
HAVANA, Jun 18 (IPS) - The lives of thousands of Cuban farmers and their
families are undergoing a radical change thanks to solar and other renewable
sources of energy, since some isolated rural areas still fall outside the
conventional electricity grid, which covers 95 to 96 percent of the population.
Sources with the National Centre of Research on Solar Energy (CIES),
located in the city of Santiago, 967 kms from Havana, announced early this month
that some 2,000 rural schools throughout the country would be equipped with
electricity this year, through photovoltaic panels that use solar energy.
''You can only get there by mule - and that's if the weather's fair.
There's no other way,'' René Camacho, a veteran journalist from Santiago
who is familiar with the remote mountainous region of eastern Cuba, told IPS.
Each solar panel accumulates enough energy to run a television set, a
VCR and two lamps - equipment that the schools will receive along with their
newfound electricity. The panels will also generate reserves to be stored up for
cloudy days.
Among the schools targetted by a government plan to provide schools
with audiovisual equipment are 128 locales with two or three students, and 21
with just one.
Solar panels will also be installed in some 300 health posts and six
hospitals in the mountains of eastern Cuba, in order to generate power to run
freezers and radios, for example.
CIES experts point out that solar energy has a number of advantages. It
does not generate noise or toxic emissions. The equipment is static, without
moving parts, which makes it highly reliable. In addition, the panels are
modular, and can thus be used for small or large demand for electricity as
needed.
The photovoltaic cells, some components of which are manufactured
locally, will be used to provide energy for housing, remote health posts and
hospitals, as well as safety devices like buoys and beacons, says the CIES.
A solar energy plant set up by the CIES with financing from an Austrian
non-governmental organisation (NGO) ''Sol para Cuba'' has brought light to an
isolated community on the eastern part of the island for the past four years.
The plant provides electricity for 32 houses and public locales, and
makes it possible to run a 25-inch colour television set, a freezer and a radio
cassette recorder at the local community centre.
The potential for solar energy in this Caribbean island nation of 11
million is estimated at 5,000 kilocalories per square metre per day.
The capacity for generating electricity from wind - which has already
begun to be used, although to a lesser extent than solar power - is also being
studied.
Cuba's first nationally-manufactured wind turbine, with a capacity of
40 kilowatt-hours a day, was installed in the eastern province of Granma two
years ago. The project includes the installation of four other generators.
And in Turiguanó, in the province of Ciego de Avila, 461 kms
from the capital, the country's first wind park is being installed, with two
generators capable of producing 450 kilowatt- hours.
Cuba's wind energy ventures have received donations of equipment from
several NGOS in Germany, Denmark and Spain, which are among the most advanced
countries in the development of ''green'' energy.
A report by the international environmental lobby Greenpeace said wind
parks with the capacity to generate nearly one million megawatts could be
installed over the next 20 years, which would already have reduced carbon
dioxide emissions by at least 232 million tonnes by 2010.
Consumption of electricity dropped considerably in the mid- 1990s as a
consequence of the hard times that hit Cuba in the wake of the collapse of the
Soviet Union and east European socialist bloc.
But the incipient economic recovery that set in towards the end of the
decade drove consumption back up to 10,600 gigawatt-hours in 1998. (A gigawatt
is equal to one billion watts). Average monthly consumption per household that
year stood at 117.7 kilowatt-hours.
Cuba gets most of its energy from hydrocarbons and sugar cane biomass,
which is used by the sugar mills themselves, one of the island's key industries.
The energy potential of sugar cane biomass from a harvest of seven
million tonnes is estimated at around 17 million tonnes of bagasse or waste,
equivalent to nearly four million tonnes of fuel oil. But this year's April to
May sugar harvest (some mills were still working in June) is projected at 3.3
million tonnes, 400,000 tonnes under official projections.
(END/IPS/tra-so/pg/dm/sw/01) \ | 
