Cuba To Install 5,000 Solar Panels Donated By China

Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party, published an article on Monday announcing the National Electric Union will soon begin installing 5,000 solar panels donated by China. The panels will be installed in a wide range of locations, and many will not connect to the national grid.

Western and central Cuba suffered a major power outage Wednesday after a failure at the island’s largest power plant triggered a partial collapse of the electrical grid. Power has since been gradually restored.

Just over half of the two-kilowatt panels will go to maternity homes, nursing homes, senior centers, emergency rooms, funeral homes, banks, municipal radio stations, radio transmitters, internet communications facilities and the commercial offices of the Electric Union, the state-run electric company. The rest will be installed in “isolated” homes, some of which have never had electricity.

“If you install a 2 kW system for these people there, so they can have a refrigerator, a fan, a television, their lives change completely, and then we contribute to preventing these people from migrating from their communities,” said Elena Maidelín Ortiz Fernández, head of the Electric Union’s installation project.