Cuba plans to install 1,000 megawatts of photovoltaic energy in a couple of years

Achieving the installed capacity proposed for 2031 “would place Cuba at an estimated 12% of photovoltaic penetration in the country’s energy generation.”
In a period of two years, Cuba intends to install a thousand megawatts of photovoltaic energy through two projects that began in 2024.

Currently, Prensa Latina indicates, there are 26 photovoltaic solar parks in different phases of construction in all the provinces of the country.

Cited by Granma, Alfredo López, general director of the Electric Union, explained that “the electrical conditions of each place are not exactly the same,” so “exhaustive work is required, from the very moment in which the studies begin to select the place where each one of them will be located.”

Meanwhile, “nearly one million photovoltaic panels have already been installed,” and another 3.6 million panels are expected to be installed, Lídice Vaillant, head of the Photovoltaic Research Laboratory at the University of Havana, told the media outlet.

According to Vaillant, achieving the installed capacity proposed for 2031 “would place Cuba at an estimated 12% of photovoltaic penetration in the country’s energy generation.”

Last September, Cuba’s Strategy for Energy Transition was presented during the International Fair of Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency that took place in Havana.

This is the Government’s flagship program to get out, in the short term, of the quagmire represented by a handful of thermoelectric plants suffering from technological obsolescence and the onerous expenditure of nearly 2 billion dollars in oil and its derivatives that have to be acquired, with an unstable and always meager financial coverage in the international markets.
The program aims to install the first 10 large solar parks in 2025, out of a total of 92. Each one will provide 22 MW.

For next year, this first batch should provide 220 MW, which will be added to the 280 MW that the country already has installed, which will allow the reduction of electrical impacts on the economy and the population during the day.

Interruptions in the electric power service affect the economy and households and respond to the prolonged energy crisis that the island is going through.