Cubans Attempt to Resolve Venezuelan Electricity Shortage Despite Living in Constant Blackout


February 8th 2010, by Belén Fernández - Pulse

Caracas streetlamp inviting citizens to report malfunctions may soon invite them to purchase a flashlight, instead. (Belén Fernández)
The latest complaint among the Venezuelan opposition to President Hugo Chávez revolves around his decision to bring Cuban Minister of Information Technology and Communications Ramiro Valdés to Venezuela to help rectify the current electrical crisis, intensified by diminishing water levels at the country’s primary hydroelectric dam. According to a front-page warning in a recent edition of Venezuelan opposition daily El Nacional, “electrical experts and Cubans in exile” have come to the conclusion that Valdés does not possess the requisite skills to evaluate electrical crises and that his expertise is instead in internet censorship; no conclusion is offered as to how Cubans in exile spontaneously acquire expertise in whatever subject is currently being used to discredit the Castro regime.

A gentleman I spoke with at the February 4 opposition march at Plaza Brión de Chacaíto in Caracas had a different perception of Valdés’ qualifications and informed me that the minister’s only expertise was in assassinations, honed during the Cuban Revolution. As for more recent examples of political changes of direction that had involved assassinations, the gentleman qualified last summer’s coup in Honduras as magnífico and entirely democratic; he stressed that these labels did not apply to the thwarted coup of February 4, 1992, the anniversary of which was being celebrated at the pro-Chávez rally nearby—with superior levels of attendance, music, and the color red.

The failed coup was conducted by then-Lieutenant Colonel Chávez and other officers against the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, which had during the “Caracazo” of 1989 massacred somewhere between several hundred and several thousand opponents of Venezuelan obsequiousness vis-à-vis the International Monetary Fund. The idea that the realm of killing belongs exclusively to Ramiro Valdés of Cuba is nonetheless being fueled by the likes of Roger Noriega, former U.S. diplomat and current managing director of Visión Américas LLC, who in a February 5 article entitled “Hugo Chávez, Desperate and Dangerous” claims that “Valdes’ sinister task is to help Chávez beat back any challenges to his authority from inside his regime as he tries to crush resistance from the streets.”

Noriega explains that inviting Valdés to assess the electricity shortage in Venezuela is somewhat equivalent to inviting Jack Kevorkian to manage a hospice. The former diplomat had also resorted to analogies in a July 2009Forbes article in order to exonerate the Honduran military for expatriating the nation’s elected president:

If a traffic cop roughs up a drunk driver at the scene of an injury accident, I doubt anyone would argue the importance of getting the drunk back behind the wheel as the best way to chastise the policeman.”

It is not clear whether Noriega’s perceived parallel between drunk driving accidents and presidential attempts at a more equitable distribution of national wealth is what prompted the Honduran Association of Maquiladoras to then retain the pro-coup lobbying services of Visión Américas LLC; also not clear is how Noriega’s diplomatic expertise—which includes favorable relations with Nicaraguan paramilitaries in the 1980s—compares with Kevorkian’s hospice-management capabilities.

As for favorable relations between other countries, Noriega refrains from outlining the origins of his mathematical expertise in calculating that “[t]ens of thousands of Castro’s finest form a shadow government in Venezuela today.” Prospects for shadows may increase once Valdés suggests candles as the antidote to the electricity shortage, thereby validating the claim by Venezuelan opposition media that a country that suffers constant blackouts cannot solve electrical problems; not addressed by said media is how that same country can suffer pharmaceutical shortages but nonetheless export doctors worldwide.

In addition to explaining that Ramiro Valdés is not the only person being imported to assess the Venezuelan electrical situation and that there are Argentine and Brazilian contingents, as well—plus offers of help from U.S., among a handful of other countries—Venezuelan Energy Minister Alí Rodríguez has argued that the Cubans’ history of electrical difficulties is precisely what has endowed them with expertise in the area of energy efficiency. Opposition mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma has remained unconvinced, however, and is quoted in today’s El Nacional as saying that Valdés, “far from knowing anything about electrical matters… is more of a specialist in electrocuting people whose opinions differ from those of the regime”—a capability Ledezma fails to reconcile with the lack of electricity in Cuba.

very amusing

Cuba is going solar big time:
About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar's installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers.
A visit to "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp. Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the "Round Table." Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together.
"The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years"
It's great that Cuban experts are helping Venez.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13171
Cubas has also imported lots of high efficiecy TV's in a major deal to cut consumption.
Its a world leader in these solutions.
S.

Yes you imbecile we know they are over there in the gulag like one big happy family

[QUOTE=Blutarsky]
[QUOTE=abc200]
[QUOTE=Blutarsky]
very amusing
[/QUOTE]
Cuba is going solar big time:
About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar's installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers.
A visit to "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp. Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the "Round Table." Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together.
"The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years"
It's great that Cuban experts are helping Venez.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13171
Cubas has also imported lots of high efficiecy TV's in a major deal to cut consumption.
Its a world leader in these solutions.
S.



[/QUOTE]
Yes you imbecile we know they are over there in the gulag like one big happy family
[/QUOTE]
Blut is anignorant fool:
Here is a fuller account:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/la-revolucion-energetica-cubas-energy-revolution
April 9, 2009
La Revolucion Energetica: Cuba's Energy Revolution
Havana, Cuba [Renewable Energy World Magazine]
A new revolution is sweeping the island of Cuba, which is making massive progress on energy efficiency and renewable generation. Indeed, such is the success of the two-year old programme on this small island of 11 million people, that many other countries could learn from its efforts to be energy independent and curb climate change. Laurie Guevara-Stone reports. (Photographs by Mario Alberto Arrastia Avila.)

Just a few years ago Cuba’s energy situation was bleak. The country had 11 large, and quite inefficient, thermoelectric plants generating electricity for the entire island. Most of the plants were 25 years old and only functioning 60% of the time. There were frequent blackouts, especially during peak demand periods. There was also a high percentage of transmission losses along the electrical distribution grid. To add to the energy crisis, most Cuban households had inefficient appliances, 75% of the population was cooking with kerosene, and the residential electrical rates did not encourage conservation. In 2004 the eastern side of Cuba was hit by two hurricanes in a short period of time, affecting transmission lines and leaving one million people without electricity for ten days. All of this in the face of the overarching drivers of peak oil and climate change, made Cubans realise they had to make energy more of a priority. Thus, in 2006, began what Cubans call La Revolución Energética – the Energy Revolution.

Cuba’s recent Energy Revolution has helped it become a true model of sustainable development. The 2006 Living Planet report assesses sustainable development by using the United Nation’s Development Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) and the ecological footprint. The HDI is calculated from life expectancy, literacy and education, and per capita GDP. The UNDP considers an HDI value of more than 0.8 to be high human development. An ecological footprint, which is a measure of demand on the biosphere, lower than 1.8 global hectares per head denotes sustainability. The only country in the world that meets both of the above criteria is Cuba. ‘Cuba has reached a good level of development according to United Nations’ criteria, thanks to its high literacy level and very high life expectancy,’ explains Jonathan Loh, one of the authors of the report, adding: ‘While the ecological footprint is not large since it is a country with low energy consumption.’

The statistics are impressive, the country is currently consuming 34% of the kerosene, 40% of the LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) and 80% of the gasoline it used to consume before the implementation of the Energy Revolution a mere two years earlier. Cuba’s per capita energy consumption is now at a level one-eighth of that in the US, while access to health services, education levels, and life expectancy are still some of the top ranking in the world, as Table 1, below shows.

.........

Small budget, big results

How does a country with a per capita GDP one-tenth that of the US, have the resources to carry out such a radical change in energy consumption, without sacrificing their high social indicators in health and education?

To understand Cuba’s Energy Revolution one must understand some of the history of energy production and consumption in Cuba. Prior to the 1959 Cuban Revolution, 56% of the country was electrified. With the socialist revolution came a push to electrify even the remotest communities. By 1989, 95% of the country was electrified – mostly with cheap oil traded for sugar with the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused the bottom to fall out of the Cuban economy. Having to buy oil on the world market meant that cheap electricity was a thing of the past. Food, gas, and oil all became scarce as the US made matters worse by tightening their economic blockade. Both the 1992 Cuba Democracy Act and Helms-Burton law passed in 1996, target foreign investment in Cuba, seeking to undermine Cuba’s international access to capital, and making much needed resources hard to come by.

The years following the Soviet collapse and the intensifying of the blockade were known as the ‘Special Period’ because Cubans had to tighten their belts and learn how to produce basic requirements such as food, medicines, and energy, both locally and sustainably.

In 1993, a National Energy Sources Development Program (Programa de desarrollo de las Fuentes Nacionales de Energia) was implemented to reduce Cuba’s energy imports and obtain maximum benefits from domestic energy sources. The document proposed that the first national source of energy should be efficiency.

After the National Energy Sources Development Program was adopted, Cuba embarked on a drive to save energy and use more renewable sources of energy. All rural schools, health clinics, and social centres in the country, not previously connected to the grid, were electrified with solar energy, and today 2364 of the solar electric systems on the island are on rural schools. Making lights, computers, and educational television programmes accessible to every schoolchild in the country; this programme won Cuba the Global 500 award from the United Nations in 2001.

However, despite all their efforts, 10 years after the programme was implemented, Cuba still had an energy crisis on its hands. So in 2006 the Energy Revolution took some of the most drastic steps any country has taken to date.

A five point plan

Cuba’s energy revolution has five main aspects: energy efficiency and conservation; increasing the availability and reliability of the national electric grid; incorporating more renewable energy technologies into their energy portfolio; increasing the exploration and production of local oil and gas; and, international co-operation.

read the rest of the article


conclusion


The rest of the world should follow Cuba’s lead, for only a true global energy revolution will allow us to seriously confront the dire environmental problems that the world now faces.

by



Laurie Guevara-Stone is the International Program manager at Solar Energy International, based in Colorado not a communist extremist
http://www.solarenergy.org/

S.

Another glaring example of the ineptness of socialism.
They can't provide a basic service like electricity by more efficient and cost effect means so now they hype a feeble attempt at the most expensive and inefficient form of power generation.

Solar power...........HAHAHAHAHA

aC possibly your most feeble supid ignorant comment yet.
Germany, posssibly the the World's most advanced economy is going solar big time too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany
Solar power could be 25% of German needs in a few years.
S.

you are a moron BIGTIME

Can you stop being boring and stupid before you turn to dust Blut?
S.

And who is going to pay for it? HAHAHAHA...Why the reformed NAZI's will.