Cuba’s PV capacity reaches 65 MW

Cuba’s cumulative installed PV power has reached 65 MW, according to provisional figures provided to pv magazine by Julio C. Rimada Herrera, professor at the Institute of Materials Science and Technology (IMRE) of the University of Havana.

The statistics were recently presented by members of the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE), during a conference on solar energy that took place in Havana at the end of December.

According to the latest figures, new PV additions for 2017 totaled about 32 megawatts.

“This year,” said Rimada Herrera, “the construction of  another 55 MW is expected to begin in the Mariel free zone, by the English company Hive Energy, and also in the middle of the year the construction of several plants with a combined capacity of 100 MW is expected begin in the western zone of Cuba. For these projects a German and a Spanish company were contracted.”

Those projects should allow the Caribbean country to cross the threshold of 100 MW, which was expected to be hit already last year. Last June, the total cumulative power was about 37 MW.

According to a recent interview conducted by pv magazine with Professor Daniel Stolik of IMRE, the levelized cost of solar energy is in Cuba currently well below 10 cents USD / kWh.

Cuba plans to install 700 MW of solar energy by 2030, according to the guidelines laid out in 2014 in the Policy on Renewable Sources and the Efficient Use of Energy.