Havana – Fidel Castro has unveiled a master plan to overhaul Cuba’s dilapidated network for generating and distributing electricity, vowing that by May Day the frequent long blackouts that increasingly have bedeviled his compatriots will be a thing of the past.
Calling 2006 the year of the “energy revolution,” the man who has ruled uninterruptedly since 1959 declared war on blackouts in a speech Tuesday night.
“By the first of May – the glorious day of the workers – at the latest,” the outages will cease, he promised during a ceremony in the western city of Pinar del Rio.
Castro thereby set a deadline for substituting the old methods of electricity generation with modern equipment, which is to guarantee power supplies and result in savings of roughly $1 billion per year.
This energy upgrade, Castro explained to high-ranking members of his government and the Communist Party, as well as hundreds of ordinary Cubans, will lead to “considerable savings for the country in terms of convertible currency” and “put an end to the annoying inconvenience caused by the frequent and unexpected blackouts (that are product of) an antiquated system and conception of power distribution.”
“There will be a before and an after of Cuba’s energy revolution,” Castro said.
“Pinar del Rio will no longer experience blackouts,” said the Cuban leader, who added that the energy improvements also would soon arrive to other provinces on the island, including Havana province.
To bring the project to fruition, Castro announced plans to install “more efficient and safe” electricity generators and repair old and inefficient power lines “that adversely affected the cost and strength of the electrical current.”
Additionally, he announced plans for an “intensive research project and the development of the use of wind and solar power.”
All told, the plan envisions a 60 percent increase in the Cuban thermo-electric power system’s 2.94 million kilowatts per hour of generating capacity. Most of the island’s electricity is generated with obsolete technology that had been provided by the former Soviet Union.
“The country will not build more thermo-electric plants, that’s history; it will only build gas-fired plants, which use a combined cycle system or another highly economical (technology),” Castro said.
“Once this project is concluded, on which we’re working intensively, the country will save a billion dollars a year,” said the president, who for months has led a concerted energy-conversation campaign.
The campaign includes not only the renovation of the country’s electrical infrastructure, but also the substitution of incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient bulbs and the replacement of obsolete, energy-inefficient appliances.
“A total of 57,289 old, energy-wasting appliances have been picked up in (Pinar del Rio province),” Castro said in praising the efforts of young social workers and university students that have worked to combat the wasting of electricity in western Cuba.
The blackouts in recent years have forced the temporary closure of businesses and the adjustment of work and classroom schedules.
