Cuba’s eternal “apagón”: How the U.S. could usher in change to the island’s power grid … and its political system.

Mi pueblo llora en agonía sin frenos
Los traidores poniendo en lo oscuro a morir a los buenos
…
Abajo Castro y todo el que lo ha apoyado a él
Están contados tus días, Canel
A Cuba libre la vamos a ver
Si cayó Roma, ¿quién eres tú pa’ no caer?

Translation:
My People cry in agony without brakes
The traitors putting in the dark, for the good to die
…
Down with Castro and everyone who’s supported him
Your days are numbered, Canel
We will see a free Cuba
If Rome fell, who are you to not fall?

— Rapper El B  

After nearly two decades working in one the largest energy-delivery markets in the United States, I (like others in the utilities sector) have come to understand that a power grid’s worth is only as good as the response to the flip of a light switch. When the lights don’t come on, your goodwill and reputation are in jeopardy until they’re working again. 

The Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines — to say nothing of Cuba’s broader Communist regime — seems to have lost whatever goodwill and reputation it might have had with most Cubans long ago. Yet things got even more grim when the country was plunged into complete darkness (their worst blackout in decades) on October 17, when one of Cuba’s major power plants failed. The impact of this blackout went beyond the light switch. Basic services such as Cuba’s water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps. To put this in what might be a more familiar perspective, in the Bronx’s Edgewater Park neighborhood, any power disruption also affects the pumps that control water and sewage disposal. If power was not restored to their water pumps, Edgewater Park residents would not have the ability to run their water or flush their toilets. 

These Bronxites, unlike Cubans, have temporary generators and an electric utility well-versed in emergency response plans to bring about full restoration in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Cubans have long suffered a persistent neglect and mismanagement of their electric infrastructure. The ramifications of that neglect are looking more and more like a humanitarian and migration crisis of a severity Cuba has not seen since the Mariel boastlist of 1980 when economic desperation, amplified oppression, food shortages, and isolation gave way to an exodus of over 125,000 Cuban refugees across the Florida Straits.

Several days after the October 17 blackout, after the government assured the public that power was restored through most of the island, the power went back out again, and in a paternalistic tone that has been standard fare since 1959, Vicente de la O Levy, minister of Energy and Mines, acknowledged “the blackouts were bothersome to residents, but most Cubans understood and supported government efforts to restore power. It is Cuban culture to cooperate. Those isolated and minimal incidents that do exist, we catalog them as incorrect, as indecent.”

Alfredo López Valdés, director of the Electric Union of Cuba (UNE) on Cuban state TV.

To add to the tone-deafness of the Cuban regime, Alfredo López Valdés, director of the Electric Union of Cuba (UNE), suggested that Cubans (who have long suffered through rolling blackouts lasting longer than 20 hours daily in some areas) purchase solar panels to take themselves off the country’s failing grid. 

“Photovoltaic systems are better than generators,” said López, “so instead of buying a generator for yourself, get solar panels.” 

López showed naivete on the economic realities of the average Cubans, for whom this technology is out of reach, as well as on the basics of how microgrids work.

The statements made by De la O Levy and Valdés underscore how the Cuban government has treated the maladies of Cuban life for over 65 years – “patria o muerte” (Spanish for fatherland or death), as the slogan goes. By patria o muerte logic, to question the failure of the electric system or the regime’s broader failure to maintain — let alone improve — the island’s infrastructure in housing, transportation, building safety, and food supply is to forfeit one’s patriotism. But these infrastructure failures are facts of life for Cubans. It’s the only thing that some generations know. Cuban author Pedro Juan Gutiérrez paints a vivid picture of that side of Cuban life in 2001’s “Dirty Havana Trilogy,” a novel set against the backdrop of a crumbling Havana where buildings collapse without warning, burying inhabitants and passing pedestrians alike, leaving ruins that look like open dollhouses, along death and despair beneath the rubble.

The Cuban government keeps plodding on through the ongoing collapse, with sticks-and-glue solutions combined with fervent flag waving to keep their vice grip on power. The electric system, (which mostly runs on aging oil-fired power plants from oil imports they can barely afford) has failed and the lack of foresight to introduce renewables or welcome foreign companies to modernize and maintain the electric grid, is nothing short of governmental malpractice. If the Cuban regime put as much effort into courting foreign energy companies as it does on luring investment by international tourist resort chains, Cuba wouldn’t be in its current energy crisis. 

We can get some sense of what solutions might look like if we revisit the intricate restoration efforts of a Caribbean neighbor: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. On September 20, 2017, Puerto Rico was decimated by Hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm that caused historic damage to the island’s electric infrastructure, throwing all of Puerto Rico into darkness. The seasoned utility professionals who were part of the initial wave of mutual aid responders from New York and Florida, including my former employer, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, had never seen anything like it.polemic inside Cuba.

“The Cuban government keeps plodding on through the ongoing collapse, with sticks-and-glue solutions combined with fervent flag waving to keep their vice grip on power.”

— Rolando Tomás Infante

In addition to the devastation, responding crews found outdated equipment, a grid that went without routine maintenance, storm hardening, or vegetation management. Responsibility for the Puerto Rican electric infrastructure belongs to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which has been saddled with cumulative debt of $8-10 billion.

A veteran electric planner who was part of the initial response effort told me, “While we were conducting damage assessments, we were astonished that many fallen transformers, still in service, were manufactured by a company that predated GE (General Electric) and is no longer in business.”

Moreover, Puerto Rico’s electric rates are comparable to Hawaii’s electric rates, the highest rates in the United States. In a previous article for DADE, I described how Cubans are also burdened with highest electric rates in the Caribbean. The rate of return for the ratepayers, on both Caribbean islands, leaves them severely shortchanged. 

Lost in the coverage of the response from the mainland United States was the herculean effort of the U.S. federal government — along with 60 investor-owned electric companies, public power utilities, and electric cooperatives, with 3,000 lineworkers and support personnel — to bring full restoration to Puerto Rico within seven months. Unlike mutual aid response on the mainland, where linemen can drive their trucks and easily transport materials on interstate roads — all trucks and materials such as poles, transformers, insulators, wires, and other components had to be shipped on barges. About 20 barges were utilized to carry over 1000 trucks and equipment, navigating in the Atlantic during the tempestuous autumn and winter months. 

The federal response, in the eyes of the mainstream media, was relegated to then-President Donald Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico, where he was derided for tossing paper towels to a crowd of Puerto Ricans at a relief center in the capital city of San Juan. But an honest examination of the federal response needs to consider that Trump signed a major disaster declaration for Puerto Rico shortly after Hurricane Maria made landfall to provide federal assistance with the storm response and recovery efforts, with the federal government covering 100 percent of the costs associated with debris removal and various emergency response measures for the first six months of the storm response. The feds also extended that cost-share for another two months, which allowed crews to continue their work uninterrupted. According to FEMA, the total cost commitment by the federal government to Puerto Rico was approximately $34 billion. 

In an April 2018 update on the restoration of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure to Congress, Carlos Torres, the Power Restoration Coordinator, addressed the inherent challenges faced by both the government and utilities in their restoration efforts. Torres attributed the overall success of the mission “to restore power to the people of Puerto Rico” to the partnership of the Unified Command Group of PREPA, FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the mainland energy industry. 

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The success of the public-private partnership in the restoration of Puerto Rico’s electric grid during 2017 and 2018 provides a blueprint for how the Cuban electric grid can be modernized and rebuilt. Irrespective of the U.S. embargo, Cuba could have forged its own restoration plan with a similar alliance of public and private entities from Latin American countries to rebuild the grid. Given that Cuba finds itself in its current situation without a viable solution to its failed power grid, the United States can step in, ameliorate its existing sanctions, and offer Cuba a path forward, with a modern and efficient 21st Century power grid, in exchange for needed political reforms, including the release of all political prisoners.   

Cuba is at the precipice of a full-scale humanitarian crisis. For decades, Cubans have endured without reliable electricity. Now, though, prolonged blackouts have plunged the island back to the age of Hatuey, and it’s only a matter of time before we see something akin to a Mariel boat lift on steroids. Blackouts mean Cubans are struggling to preserve refrigerated food, meat, dairy, and medication from spoilage, as they suffer food shortages and food insecurity. Faced with no other alternatives, Cubans will choose survival over nationalism when they become sick, can’t feed themselves or their families, or worse, due to the consistent failures of the Cuban electric grid and its administrator, the failed Cuban regime.  

Thanks in large part to political and economic strife, Venezuela’s diaspora has grown to 8 million Venezuelans living abroad, about 22.5 percent of the country’s population, with the majority migrating to Colombia, Peru, and the United States. If the same percentage of Cubans were to migrate out of the island, the United States should expect the majority of over three million Cubans to arrive on our shores, adding to our overwhelmed immigration system of over ten million illegal immigrants. 

Cuba is increasingly isolated, as it deals with an attrition of trading partners due to an inability to meet the country’s financial commitments. China, the flagship Communist nation, just suspended its sugar contract with Cuba, a break in a bilateral relationship of over 15 years. China has been increasingly dissatisfied with Cuba’s outdated economic model and has demanded a more modernized market-oriented approach that incorporates investments. 

Fidel Castro lived by that timeless Chinese proverb, “in crisis, there is opportunity.” The incoming Trump administration would be wise to take a page from that playbook and propose an Electric Marshall Plan to the regime in exchange for real political and economic reforms, including UN-monitored elections. In adhering to a new economic corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States would be able to help guide Cubans out of the Communist cave that they’ve been stuck in since 1959. 

Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel and the rest of the regime can continue to delude themselves into believing that they are invincible, that their system will survive anything that they will absolved by history.

The reality, as el B rapped, is very different. “If Rome fell, who are you to not fall?”