Havana's Temporary Power Supply

[Corylax18]

Piggybacking on the fuel shortage thread I wanted to provide some more information on Cuba's very temporary and very expensive "solution" to keep the lights on in Havana. 

They're paying a Turkish company (Karadeniz) roughly $38 million dollars a month to rent 7 "Powerships", essentially freighters that have been converted into floating power plants. They are equipped to burn "Bunker Fuel" or Fuel Oil, essentially the leftovers from refining Crude Oil into Gasoline and Diesel. 

As you can see from the smoke in the photos and google earth shot, this fuel is very dirty and doesn't burn cleanly at all. 

I add some links below to the companies website and an article on the situation. I had some business out on the southwest side of Havana during my last trip, so I asked my driver to take "the long way" around the port so I could grab some photos. 

As you can see, the main power plant in Havana is a decrepit, rusting, shell of a building. They are still using its grid connections to feed Havana power from these ships. However, its far beyond any repairs. It needs to be demolished and replaced. 

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cuba-welcomes-7th-powership-its-fleet-struggle-keep-lights-2022-11-15/

https://www.karadenizholding.com/en

In the snip below, the 5 yellow boxes are 5 of the 7 ships currently in place. The red box is the existing "power plant", the blue lines are the temporary power lines and the purple line is where the photos where taken from. (for reference)

[ha_banos]

Apparently they are on their 8th ship now!

 https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/cuba-power-outages-when-start-where-why-b1061112.html

 

 

[Hammer Smokin']

as someone who works in power production, the entire situation is insane. 

from their existing main distribution power facility, to the temp lines across the ocean to the ships, to the nature of the fuel being burned in the ships. 

 

[Corylax18]

39 minutes ago, Hammer Smokin' said:

as someone who works in power production, the entire situation is insane. 

from their existing main distribution power facility, to the temp lines across the ocean to the ships, to the nature of the fuel being burned in the ships. 

 

Yeah, insanity is really the only accurate descriptor left. They continue to piss away millions of dollars a month on this scheme, and on new hotel construction, while the rest of the country continues to crumble. While more Cuban's die trying to "maintain" 30-40 year old plants around the rest of the island. Imagine the solar, wind, hell new gas/coal plants you could build with the nearly $500 million per year they're throwing away on rent.  

[benfica_77]

This current approach is unsustainable. It's madness. They have the money to fix the problem too that's the nutty part. 

[ha_banos]

1 hour ago, benfica_77 said:

This current approach is unsustainable. It's madness. They have the money to fix the problem too that's the nutty part. 

But they've let it all crumble to the point of no return. It would take years without enough power to restore the existing plants, no?

 

 

[SCgarman]

1 hour ago, Corylax18 said:

Yeah, insanity is really the only accurate descriptor left. They continue to piss away millions of dollars a month on this scheme, and on new hotel construction, while the rest of the country continues to crumble. While more Cuban's die trying to "maintain" 30-40 year old plants around the rest of the island. Imagine the solar, wind, hell new gas/coal plants you could build with the nearly $500 million per year they're throwing away on rent.  

Isn't 500 million about equal to last years sales figures for Habanos cigar revenue? Time for another cigar price increase!😂

[NSXCIGAR]

1 hour ago, ha_banos said:

But they've let it all crumble to the point of no return. It would take years without enough power to restore the existing plants, no?

Yep, they've been coasting off the pre-91 Soviet largess, however the wheels on the bus eventually come off. I would doubt if any of the existing power generation infrastructure would be worth putting a penny into.

And I doubt they can find a sucker to drop 10 billion into infrastructure with no hope of Cuba ever being an honest partner. That's what screwing everyone for decades gets you. 

You can only kick the can down the road so far. Maybe no one should bail them out. Maybe the lack of power could be the thing that gets the people to finally rise up.

Unless some idiot tosses them a massive lifeline this issue is only getting worse. And imagine if they hadn't lost 300-400k people in the last 2 years! 

Maybe some bleeding heart naive country like Lichtenstein or Sweden will play ball but I hope not.