stupid question: cuba is a hot country that supposedly receives plenty of sunlight throughout the year, why hasn't there been a solar initiative for every house or something along those lines?
I don't think it's a stupid question. Cuba is increasing their solar energy, as far as I know they plan to increase their 200 something MW to 2 or 3 GW over the next 4-5 years. There are a lot of challenges in doing that though, one of them is the US. We build (or buy and upgrade) solar plants around the globe but we wouldn't risk the US market over going into Cuba. I doubt we're the only ones. Then there is the question of funding, which I would guess is an issue if they can't pay for the fossil fuels needed to keep their fossil fuel power plants running.
Considering the recent crisis seem to have been caused by lack of maintenance solar is probably a good option for Cuba as it doesn't require much. Once you set up a park it'll work for 25 years at least and even continue working for decades afterwards on tolerable levels. You'll need to do greenfield work and replace a panel once in a while, but a lot of parks can be almost left alone from an engineering perspective.
This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support.
> This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support.
Would you be willing to post some references on this? I trust you know what you're talking about, but I'd like to read more. I thought 25 deg C or 77 deg F was the peak efficiency temperature and typical panels slowly lost efficiency on either side that. I didn't know of anywhere in the continental US that was always below 20-25 C.
They go as low as 10°C as the ambient temperature, and you can see that in the range they're testing, operation at lower temperature is always more efficient than at higher temperatures.
> we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives
I'm not sure this is actually true.
Here in Germany, we have a lot of cloud cover, and PV parks still make sense economically. I'm pretty sure places with lower cloud coverage, lower land prices but higher temperatures still make PV parks viable.
I think we might need an physicist to explain it better than I can. That being said 25 degrees C is not exactly "optimal conditions" but rather standard test conditions (STC). The temperature coefficient of the solar cells is -0,something% (0,3 or 0,4 I think) per degree of deviation from the STC. So they increase their efficiency as you go below 25 degrees C and lose efficiency if you go above. I think the STC is 25C because that is where you'll typically get the best combination of temperature and sun hours with the least amount of snowfall, I could be wrong though.
> I didn't know of anywhere in the continental US that was always below 20-25 C.
I should've been both clearer on what I meant. Both because I should've written that it was "generally" don't go above 20-25 rather than "never", sorry about that. Tariffs are a key aspect of it though, because many countries where you do go above 25 during the summer have green tariffs, NGO bonuses and/or tax reductions. Germany, Holland or similar are good examples of where you'll get hotter weather than 25 during the summer, but you're also paid tariffs where their government programs will pay you X amount of money up til a certain MW production, at which point you're selling at market rates. In some areas you have the NGO's which are often "green funds" set up by large companies which grant financial bonuses to green energy initiatives. Sometimes for philanthropic reasons sometimes to balance their CO2 outputs.
Generally speaking it's a sort of silly calculations that you do to build the most financial viable plants. In Germany for instance the tariffs not only cut off at a certain MW production, they completely go away meaning that you'll actually lose the tariffs completely. You might think that was a reason to keep production low, but EU laws make it possible to split your physical solar plant into multiple different solar plants owned by different companies, which can then sell power individually and even sell to each other. Yes... But at least it gets the green energy plants build.
It is the only communist nation in the Americas, was the first in the western hemisphere to recognise the People’s Republic of China and is described by Beijing as “good brother, good comrade, good friend”.
But despite their shared political legacy — and what Washington says is a history of Chinese spying activity from Cuba — the island’s economic collapse has hurt commercial ties with China just as Beijing’s strategic rivalry intensifies with the Caribbean island’s arch-enemy, the US.
Chinese trade with Latin America has grown more than tenfold over the past two decades and continues to surge: China has become the second-largest trading partner for the region, after the US. But the import of Chinese goods to Cuba fell from $1.7bn in 2017 to $1.1bn in 2022, the last year for which Cuban data is available.
The two countries do not release data on Chinese investment in Cuba, but Cuban economist Omar Everleny said it amounted to a “laughably small” proportion of the roughly $160bn Beijing invested in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2005 and 2020.
Scant raw materials and an unproductive economy leave the island with little to export to China, while imports have diminished in recent years as hardened US sanctions severely aggravated Havana’s chronic late-payment problems and dried-up credit lines.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, sugar production on the island — once a critical industry — has plummeted to its lowest levels in more than a century: there is barely enough sugar to cover domestic requirements. That has resulted in the scrapping of a long-standing agreement to export an annual 400,000 tonnes of sugar to China.
“China is not Cuba’s sugar daddy,” said Fulton Armstrong, former US national intelligence officer for Latin America. “It’s mostly a relationship of solidarity statements. It’s not a strategic relationship for either country.”
China publicly supports Cuba’s right to choose its own path to economic development “in line with its national conditions”, but privately Chinese officials have long urged the Cuban leadership to shift from its vertically planned economy to something closer to the Chinese model, according to economists and diplomats briefed on the situation.
Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said.
“Taking the Yutong” is now synonymous with “taking the bus” in Havana, while Cubans — experts in gallows humour — baptised the hundreds of thousands of leaky Haier refrigerators imported as part of Fidel Castro’s “Energy Revolution” to improve energy efficiency as “Drippys”.
Cuba has been a member of China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure development initiative since 2018 and China remains the island nation’s second trading partner after Venezuela, which sends the country oil in return for Cuban doctors.
Beijing and Havana have a cyber security agreement, and over the past two decades Chinese groups Huawei, TP-Link and ZTE have installed fibre optic cables, WiFi hotspots and other digital infrastructure throughout the island.
But Chinese imports are “way down . . . overall”, said one western businessman based in Havana. “Exporters are shifting away from the China-Cuba credit lines and moving to the private sector.”
Cuba still exports nickel, zinc and luxury cigars to China, leases doctors in return for hard currency payment, and co-operates on biotech.
Cuban President Miguel Diáz-Canel has twice visited Beijing and brought back politically useful handouts, including medical equipment during the pandemic, a $100 million donation last year and thousands of tonnes of rice donations this year. But he has been unable to coax greater economic integration.
“The Chinese don’t give away a lot of charity,” said William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University. “The Cubans right now are in a position where they need charity, and they don’t have much to offer in return.”
Beijing also has a much lower-profile security relationship with Havana than does Moscow, which is openly focused on Cuba’s geopolitical value as a close neighbour of the US. Russian naval flotillas have docked in Havana twice this year in a show of military strength. Russian trade with Cuba has surged in recent years, driven by US sanctions on both countries and the war in Ukraine.
There have been reports suggesting China has renewed efforts to take advantage of Cuba’s strategic location with electronic eavesdropping stations on the island.
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The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think- tank, said in July there were “growing signs that China’s economic and political leverage may be opening doors for its military and intelligence services in Cuba”. US secretary of state Antony Blinken said last year that Chinese spying operations in Cuba were “a serious concern”.
But asked about the CSIS report, a US state department official said the Biden administration believed its “diplomatic outreach has slowed down [China’s] efforts to project and sustain its military power around the world”.
LeoGrande said some in Florida and Washington were keen to create a “Chinese bogeyman in Cuba”. “It serves the interests of conservative Cuban-Americans, who are always looking for reasons not to improve US-Cuban relations, and in the broader policy community it serves the interest of those who think that China is a global threat.”
This story has been amended to clarify that Huawei and Yutong are not owned by the Chinese state.
Solar installations in capital societies have taken off due to initial government and private sector investment.
Despite Cuba opening up over the last decade, there's still not good investment infrastructure to support large scale solar and wind installations. In other words, it's still a semi communist government that leans much more towards Soviet style versus China.
The article itself talks a bit about how the general electrical infrastructure in the country is aging and needs maintenance and upgrades.
Combine the government policies, general economy, hostility to foreign investment, etc and you hopefully get an idea of why solar hasn't had a major impact.
