I don’t get it. How does the failure of one single power plant cripple an island that large?
For a historical analogue check out what happened in Italy on 28. September 2003. One international line in Switzerland sparked to a tree, and got shut down, that caused a cascade where the other lines to France were overheating and getting shut down a few minutes after, and Italy didn’t manage to shed enough load in time to keep up their frequency internally, then everything shut off when it drooped low enough. Took them 18 hours afterwards to get the whole grid back online.
Article doesn’t say, but one plausible scenario:
A big power plant goes down and other plants have to pick up the load. Load exceeds capacity of remaining plants and they shut down (or breakers blow, etc). Repeat. Power plants also need energy to start up (black start), and if there’s no grid energy to power those ancillary systems, or if the power plant doesn’t have on-site auxiliary generators to provide black start capability, they’re down until they can get power again from elsewhere.
Base load plants (coal, nuclear) don’t throttle up and down quickly for changing loads. For quick response, we use peaker plants which are typically natural gas powered turbines and can respond quicker (grid batteries are, thankfully, replacing these in some cases).
That’s grossly over-simplified but it’s more or less the gist of it.
so it’s exactly like coal generators in Satisfactory
Power plants also need energy to start up (black start), and if there’s no grid energy to power those ancillary systems, or if the power plant doesn’t have on-site auxiliary generators to provide black start capability, they’re down until they can get power again from elsewhere.
This is huge, we have massive drills to make sure we can do this, and idle black start plants for just this purpose alongside almost an entire secondary grid for bootstrapping.
Electricity is expensive and hard as hell.
It trips me out that many of these plants don’t have APUs for starting themselves up, or that they were designed in such a way that they require utility power to boot up. Like I understand that black starts could have problems with frequency sync with no point of reference, but I can’t imagine that their control system circuits don’t have any form of self-powering redundancy built in to their design. Is there any reason for this?
We didn’t have digital controls when they were designed, so you couldn’t use GPS or atomic clocks to synchronize frequencies, you just needed to have a single source of coordination. Those coils were manually controlled till not long ago.
Now we should be able to use some kind of small gas turbine with a igbt rig for synchronization, much like they do with wind turbines.
People often don’t appreciate how far we’ve come over the past 2 decades, and how utterly manual and brute force we were until very, very recently.
It’s why “smart grids” are talked about a lot recently, even though it doesn’t mean much for the layperson. But for the people actually working in the industry, it matters a lot and can be a huge benefit
Electric grids are really tough to get back online from what I’ve read. Rolling blackouts help keep things online, but if the whole thing goes down at once it’s tricky to get all the generators on the same timing for their 60/50 Hz transmission lines.
If you keep proactive with rolling blackouts you have a chance, but if you are slacking even a bit all the spinning plates fall at once.
If demand exceeds supply, the whole grid will fail as the voltage/frequency drop trips all sorts of safety systems meant to protect the grid and the devices connected to them. Normally the supply and demand are continually balanced to avoid this.
If a major plant goes offline and you don’t shut down equal demand at the same time (usually by disabling entire neighborhoods) then this is the result.
Here’s Practical Engineering explaining how it almost happened in Texas. he also goes into why starting from a black start is so hard
That’s how power works, you miss your requirements by even a little and you can get cascading failures if you haven’t engineered things well and your guys aren’t sharp.
Power engineering is not something casual, it’s brutal and if you aren’t on your toes then your toes will leave black sooty marks where they were.
We spend insane amounts of money keeping things going, Cuba probably cut corners and couldn’t do upgrades due to sanctions/embargoes.
Cascade failure maybe? Sudden loss causes other plants to try to pick up slack, overloading one of them, which puts even more pressure on the rest until they all fail?
I’m amazed they don’t have redundancies in case of things like this. I guess not.
I’d be more amazed if they where able to build that capacity behind an American blockade
It’s an embargo, not a blockade. Plenty of other countries trade with Cuba. In fact, Canadians go to Cuban resorts on the regular.
I would have hoped things had improved in the last 20 years. Apparently they haven’t, at least in Cuba.
It’s Cuba. They’ve been hamstringed by the US embargo for a very long time. I’m amazed they’re doing as well as they are. My understanding is that, with the exception of medicine and food, basically anything that touches American soil or American hands (literally or metaphorically) is illegal to officially export to Cuba regardless of the country it’s being sold in.
So for an example, any steel made in the US, manufactured for US companies, made using iron from the US, etc, may not be officially sold to Cuba. That doesn’t mean a Mexican company can’t buy the steel and resell it to Cuba; but it means Cuba potentially has to pay multiple tariffs and pay to have it bounced from the US to at least one other country before it can go to Cuba.
Furthermore, my understanding is that foreign companies with a US presence don’t tend to do business with Cuba because the US will put pressure on them to stop doing business with Cuba.
The embargo needs to end. Cuba could have been the US’ strange, goofy cousin with weird ideas about government and economy; because it seems like the Cuban government is making a legitimate attempt at a socialistic system. However, US capitalists ruined everything (iirc the embargo didn’t start with the cold war, it started because Cuba overthrew the banana republic previously ruling them, which pissed off fruit companies. Said companies then cried to Uncle Sam because their slaves revolted and the US said, “you gotta pay them back for all the fruit they lost, plus interest”.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
The blackout’s proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system.
Not a plant but another example of something that should have been small causing massive outages. From what I know talking to people who’ve worked for the province’s grid operator, it’s a massive job to keep everything going.
average lemmy user: “but communism is still waaaay better than capitalism”
What an absolutely braindead comment.
Yep, if communism is to blame then maybe the US should lift the embargoes/sanctions and let communism fail on its own strengths or weaknesses. But they won’t do that. I wonder why.
It’s like the joke about Americans saying that communism is doomed to fail as if they haven’t spent billions and billions of dollars trying to make sure it fails.
They should trade China all the cigars and rum they want for enough cheap solar and batteries to power the island.
This just begs the question
Why do we allow a major embargo of an entire island nation and allow an entire people to live without the proper necessities and resources in order to maintain their nation?
Longest embargo in US history!
… probably done as a deterrent against and other near by nations looking to station nuclear arms jn close proximity.
Stops places like Mexico, Canada, or Panama from making an offer to China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia to station Nuclear their silos/launch bases for them.
Canda is probably still thinking about it though.
You can control a nation’s ability to import and receive nuclear weapons, especially if you are trying to control the supply of arms … it doesn’t mean you get to starve and decimate an entire country just because you don’t like their politics or they don’t happen to support you.
So, while I would agree, politics has unfortunate side effects, both internal cuban politics, and external cuban politics, as the cuban exiles really, REALLY want to get all their shit back.
We shouldn’t be in it, but our Cubans hijacked a large part of our politics by living in such a strong swing state, so we’re at the mercy of them as much as anyone.
doesn’t mean you get to starve and decimate an entire country just because you don’t like their politics
I think the history of the US and every other imperial power ever would disagree.
Unfortunately like so many things in this world the severity is the point.
Canada is probably still thinking about it though.
Because the people there didn’t allow US capitalists to exploit them and their resources; because the people started to organize themselves and their resources around public interest; because they were voting in leaders who didn’t allow US elite to exploit them.
And so they must be punished.
The US has an embargo, but Mexico and Canada don’t. Cuba can and does buy goods from them. Cuba’s real problem is paying for them. The US does not embargo food or medicine goods to Cuba, yet the country has problems feeding their people. Poor economic management of a communist country with no real resources.
The US has an embargo, but Mexico and Canada don’t.
Technically, but the US has sanctioned companies in other countries who do business in Cuba scaring off a ton of possible choices. The companies have to choose between the richest company on earth and Cuba. Not much of a choice.
Plus IIRC boats that go to Cuba can’t go to the US after for some period of time. Which considering location makes it hugely inconvenient for shipping companies.
Plus since the US and US based companies control a huge portion of the world’s financial systems Cuba is locked out of all of them
A citation is needed on the first paragraph
Barges float to Cuba from the US twice a week.
Last paragraph is true. Cuba cannot use US banking.
There are exceptions for the very few things the US authorizes to export to Cuba, but in general:
- What are the “180-day rule” and the “goods/passengers-on-board rule”?
The 180-day rule is a statutory restriction prohibiting any vessel that enters a port or place in Cuba to engage in the trade of goods or the purchase or provision of services there from entering any U.S. port for the purpose of loading or unloading freight for 180 days after leaving Cuba, unless authorized by OFAC. This restriction is applied even if a vessel has stopped in Cuba solely to purchase services unrelated to the trade of goods, such as planned ship maintenance.
So you couldn’t find anything. Nice
Really has nothing to do with article.
Cuba can’t pay because Cuba can’t conduct normal finances with the rest of world because of the US embargo
It’s like having having someone handcuff you, cuff you feet and pin you to the ground and rest their knee on your neck and ask you why you can’t get up on your own.
They can certainly conduct commerce with the rest of the world.
The question is, with what currency? The Cuban dollar is not really worth anything outside Cuba, so they can only rely on exports to fund currency needed to buy imports.
This is true, but not due to a US embargo. I should think that the state has access to many different currencies. But, in the end, they have limited resources. Cigars, some Rum (though a lot of countries distil and export rum in the Caribbean). They used to export mercenaries and doctors but noone is buying now.
You don’t think being explicitly barred access from what is essentially considered “the world currency” at this point wouldn’t change their access? C’mon.
They’re not barred from access. Just can’t use US banks. There are many banks in the world.
You are technically correct … but there are several convoluted rules and regulations controlled and mandated by the US that it makes it either very difficult or impossible for most countries to do business or trade with Cuba.
Cuba can trade with anyone they want … it’s just purposely made so difficult that very few do so and the ones who do provide very little in exchange.
What I read in your link is not so much Political fact but a disagreement of experts.
What I read in your text is that trade is to difficult, however it is done.
If you’re a company why would you even fuck with more difficult trade.
The important part that you miss is that they do. So, it must not be that difficult
President Obama began to ease the embargo restrictions in 2016, allowing for travel and investments. It was Trump, in 2017, who reinstated the embargo in full. Probably just because Obama relaxed it.
https://press.un.org/en/2023/ga12552.doc.htm
UN discussion on how damaging the embargo is
Then Biden got into office and uh,
which one of his sponsors is profiting from the embargo?
Hey, too close to election for me to not fervently call out misinformation bullshit like this:
It was The Trump Administration who signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5)
National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5): Signed on June 16, 2017, this policy outlined the Trump administration’s approach to rolling back aspects of the Cuba normalization process. It directed restrictions on travel, business dealings with Cuban entities controlled by the military, and restrictions on educational and cultural exchanges.
It was Donald Trump who directed the creation of the Cuba Restricted List
The U.S. Department of State, following Trump’s directives, created a list of Cuban entities with which direct financial transactions are prohibited. This list largely includes businesses owned by or affiliated with the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services. It was first issued in November 2017 and has been updated several times since.
Has absolutely nothing to do with Biden or his administration. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
Biden isn’t running anymore. You don’t have to defend his unwillingness to roll back Trump policy anymore.
There’s a shitton of Trump’s policies that need reversing.
But, as always, it takes more time, effort and resources to build or fix something than it does to break them.
Biden’s admin has been working through the heap, but some things take priority over others.
Biden’s admin has been working through the heap, but some things take priority over others.
Particularly when it comes to foreign policy.
I was more pointing out how Biden has done little or nothing to REVERSE Trump’s regressions despite having the power to.
Oh good, let’s blame the guy who didn’t do something instead of the guy who did.
Has absolutely nothing to do with Biden or his administration. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
Exactly! Not doing something to stop a problem is not the same as causing it. Also, if you don’t vote for Harris you’re voting for Trump.
I like this logic
How convenient that the Democrats can act so powerless. If we don’t like Republican policies, and Democrats won’t change them, what’s the point of voting Democrat?
It’s not about saying Biden is to blame. Trump 100% should have blame.
But the fact that someone else STARTED (or in this case re-started) a bad thing doesn’t mean the next person in power gets a free pass for not working to stop it again.
So it’s perfectly fair to call out Biden for not stopping the bad thing that Trump (re)started.
Dude. Breathe. We’re all on the same side, I’m certain.
I think he’s implying Biden didn’t roll back Trump’s policy or try to begin normalization again.
Oh good, let’s blame the guy who didn’t do something instead of the guy who did.
Has absolutely nothing to do with Biden or his administration. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
You replied exactly the same ?
No of course not why would the most powerful man on earth and former VP to the president who made that progress with Cuba have any responsibility to change anything.
He had the power and has not done it. It IS as bad as Trump’s actions to uphold them.
The kid was already malnourished when I adopted it, you expect me to feed it properly?
The article doesn’t specify, but it appears to be a long term fuel issue. They have been trying to cut back for a while now, including with blackouts for various areas, but they finally ran out and/or the demand while it was on just crashed the system.
Restarting an entire grid is not easy either, it usually takes many hours even if you have fuel available.
More like decrepit oil-fired power plants, many decades old. Cuba is also having economic problems.
