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China is building 75 solar parks in Cuba, and the island’s power crisis is becoming an infrastructure experiment (www.vozpopuli.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/energy@slrpnk.net
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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Why do you think aiding an addiction would be helping out? Solar panels are blockade proof. Cuba's biggest problems come from over reliance on disposable imports; if Cuba had access to solar Venezuela wouldn't have been invaded and Cuba wouldn't have any real negative effects from this blockade besides the loss of tourism income.

Besides China doesn't sell oil, they do sell Solar panels and batteries. One generally gives what they have.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don't die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    China has tankers with oil, this is an emergency, building solar is great long term, but it doesn't matter to the patients on ventilators and the farmers who's tractors have no fuel.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Keeping the power plants running so babies don’t die is not feeding an addiction wtf.

    What... what do you think the solar panels are going to do?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    They will decrease the severity of the crisis, but as the article says, theres not enough, they take time to come online, and upgrading Cuba's grid and storage will take even longer, and it still doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    Cuba needs oil now.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    doesn't help processes that need oil like farming and concrete production.

    If they can reduce oil use in power generation, it should help by reducing the overall amounts of oil they need to procure

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Cuba has a huge capacity to make ethanol. Brazil does this.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Brazil is around 8,514,877 km², Cuba is around 110,860 km².

    Brazil has around 963,000 km² farm land. Cuba has around 36,000 km²[1] of farmland.

    If it were to convert all of its farmland into ethanol production, resulting in the mass starvation of the Cuban population, it could not produce anything close to what Brazil could produce. But how much could it produce?

    We'll be assuming Brazil's sugarcane method is the most efficient crop for Cuba given their similar climates and growing zones. Which gives us around 764,000 liters of ethanol per km²

    Cuba uses 178,000 barrels per day of oil, which comes out to 28,302,000 liters of oil per day, or around 10,337,305,500 liters per year. Which means Cuba only needs to convert... 13,560 km² of their farmland to ethanol production. So the famously fat and never food insecure Cubans need to just give up half[1] of their food production!

    Great solution.

    [1]Cuba has 109,000 km² of land, and many sources give the available farmland of cuba at 30% of available land... but also list it at 65.000 km². Which wouldn't be 30%. I'm assuming 30% is about right given the geography of Cuba. It's possible 63% of Cuba is farmland, which makes this slightly easier, but looking at google maps that doesn't seem right.

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