CAMAGÜEY.- These letters will not turn the power back on, nor will they turn on the stove so that you can cook for your family, nor will they make the fan work to reduce the heat for the children at home; just to mention some of the despair in which annoying blackouts place us, which also affect the economy, our work functions and even the stability of the country.
"Nobody designs an electrical circuit to turn it off," Juan Carlos Lacaba Jofre, one of the experts from the Provincial Electric Company, told us with all the logic in the world to whom we went to seek answers and to understand how the so-called circuit works these days National Electro energetic System (SEN, by its acronym in Spanish).
Before 1959 the SEN did not exist, Cuba only generated 397 megawatts, 397,000 kilowatts, distributed in isolated systems, not interconnected, typical of an underdeveloped country. Electricity reached barely 56% of the population, then estimated at about 6,500,000 inhabitants. In the fields of Cuba, the mountains, the intricate areas, it was still a dream.
The 110,000 volt lines did not allow a link to a single system. Camagüey only had Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Florida, the provincial capital, Minas and Nuevitas, electrified by the misnamed Cuban Electricity Company. The sugar towns had this service during harvest time, the rest of the year they did not. And in a few other places small private plants were operating. With the Revolution, the 220,000-volt lines emerged that allow energy to be transferred from one place to another in the national geography.
This made it possible to increase electrified homes in the country to the point that today electrification exceeds 98%, only compared to developed countries or much richer than Cuba in natural resources. José Manuel García Acosta, another of the experts consulted, explains that in order to maintain these levels, first world countries have four levels of generation: base generation, reserve generation, ready reserve and cold reserve.
“In Cuba, although it was always a purpose, the material conditions and the economic war prevented completing those levels. Today we have base generation and distributed generation or generator sets as the generators acquired during the Energy Revolution are popularly known, a great idea, no one doubts it, because they emerged to support the peaks”, explained García Acosta.
WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY?
All that network design work requires a backup generation behind it. Cuba today has 20 generating units distributed in eight thermoelectric plants that have a useful life of 30 years, and the average exploitation of ours is 37.5 under atypical conditions, thanks to the efforts of many people. However, its availability does not exceed 50.2%. Due to the economic conditions of the country, it has not been possible to execute the investments for the generation that support such a high degree of electrification, to which is added a mostly electric cooking matrix.
According to José Manuel —who among his many responsibilities in the sector had that of directing the company that provides maintenance to thermoelectric plants— when it was decided to process Cuban crude it was known that due to its high sulfur content, in addition to a lot of solids in burning , the generating units would need more maintenance.
“This sulfur in pipes and boilers accelerates the corrosion process of metals and that is why so many breakdowns occur in boilers, mainly leaks. In addition, a ton of our crude oil produces fewer kilocalories than one of the imported oil and therefore the machine does not work at 100% of its capacity”.
With the experience of years dedicated to this world, the also professor of many of the Camagüey’s electricians ensures that even when there are units out due to breakdowns and the situation is tense, it is better to stop the units and give them maintenance, otherwise they break and remain more time out of the system.
Distributed generation is in a similar situation, the specialists explain. According to information recently provided by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, more than 50% of the installed capacity in generator sets is out of service due to lack of spare parts and aggregates for engine repair and in other cases limited by having reached the authorized hours of operation and awaiting maintenance. At the time they were state-of-the-art technology, 16 years later the manufacturers do not produce these spare parts, affecting their technical availability.
García Acosta elaborated that distributed generation was designed to assume peak demand, four or five hours of use, but over time they had to be used up to 16 hours a day, which also shortened their life cycles.
Lacaba Jofre explains that the blackouts occur because as all the electricity generation is not ready, the demand exceeds the generation capacity, “in technical language they call that difference a deficit”. The demand moves according to the schedules, the specialists explain, an average demand (during the day), a maximum (peak hours) and a minimum (early morning).
Camagüey during peak hours, which as a provincial average occurs at 9:00 p.m., consumes between 150 and 160 MW and the average during the day ranges between 100 and 120 MW. This week, for example, the deficit has oscillated between 50 and 70 MW, which means in simple mathematics, that for every 12 hours 50% of the province's clients have had to be turned off.
The territory is not one of those that consume the most, it corresponds to the average of the country; but it constitutes the sixth with more clients. The amount of deficit is distributed in the country according to the demand, for which we are not among those affected but neither are we among the least, experts explain. Faced with a demand of 100, if the system generates only 40, there are two options: put a generator of 60 or turn it off; and if you don't manually disconnect it, it protects itself by disconnecting in a disorderly manner.
SAVINGS REMAIN KEY
The only formula to lower demand lies in saving, we repeat it and it's not a grind. Do not think that with blackouts the country saves. Think on a large scale of what happens at home when the power comes on: we try to recover everything that we couldn't do, and that also generates an increase in demand. A light bulb that we turn off while we have electricity represents less MW to be produced by the SEN, it can mean that another does not go away or that you lack less time, because demand, generation and deficit occur in real time.
José Manuel Acosta explained that saving at home has an impact on two fundamental aspects: it lowers billing and it helps the country because consumption is lower. "For the client to consume 100 kilowatts, the system must generate between 110 and 120 due to the loss in transportation."
Experts say that after the blackout there is an overconsumption, because cooking, pumping water, washing, turning on refrigerators and televisions, and this can cause trips in the lines due to overloads not related to scheduled outages. Also in these days it has happened that after the service is restored, certain breakdowns become evident, whose solutions increase the times of affectation, to which is added that the switches are operated manually.
The blackout becomes a lose-and-lose formula, the economy stagnates, there is no production or sales, processes become slower, and people's moods are affected.
As President Díaz-Canel explained, the perspective is that the SEN will recover gradually, with the efforts of many people, with the experience and youth of people who spend hours looking for alternatives and thinking about how to affect the population as little as possible.
Users cannot imagine how tense an office becomes when the national system orders loads to be removed from the system, without touching the hospital circuits, or where coupled children live whose lives depend on electricity, just to cite two examples, because even in difficult conditions this country cares about the human being, about the people, which continues to be essential.
These lines do not decrease your time without current nor do they end blackouts. But, hopefully they will help you understand that it is not someone's whim to turn off the electricity, that Cuba makes an extraordinary effort to maintain first world indicators in the most sensitive spheres despite an underdeveloped and besieged economy. The campaign of discredit and manipulation is brutal; we are accused of everything, but let's try not to extinguish reason.
Translated by line Acuña Quilez