April 11, 2008
News about street lighting

Although not a priority, it was always part of the Energy Revolution. Power Management official Antonio Pías Gómez talked with Granma about current and future plans.

By: Susana Lee / Photos: Arnaldo Santos
Susan.ll@granma.cip.cu

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Original:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2008/04/11/nacional/artic02.html

Public lighting is a recurring topic on the list of people’s complaints, one of the ten most frequent concerns that People’s Power delegates have been hearing about in meetings with their voters, and often a major subject in letters we get from our readers that is still pending in most cases.

A recently restored section of Havana’s 100th Street, where works to improve the street lighting are still underway. Around 40 thoroughfares are included in the plans for this year.

A limiting factor during the special period was the lack of resources to protect our lighting system from further deterioration. Those in charge of providing electric power had other more important priorities to deal with, and rightly so.

Set in motion after our National Power Supply System (SEN) virtually fell down in the summer of 2004, the Energy Revolution issued the guidelines needed to solve our most pressing matters. Programs succeeded each other to assure, stabilize and increase service quality, effectiveness and dependability and, above all else, save as much of our natural resources as possible.

Antonio Pías told us of more than 7,100 street lamps already delivered to our provinces and the Special Municipality [Isla de la Juventud] that the local authorities will install where they’re most needed.

However, even if it was an item on the agenda at the time, it had to be kept out of the list of urgencies, as the logical, rational thing to do was devote everything we had to eliminate the bothersome and costly power outages and foster plans to restore and overhaul the SEN and prevent the 2004 situation from happening again.

Fidel personally oversaw the implementation of the first programs and many of the plans that we still see in motion, contribute to, and benefit from these days.

STREET LIGHTING NOWADAYS

The progress made by the Energy Revolution’s priorities made it possible to put other programs into practice, for instance, plans to restore our grids and reduce system leaks with a view to upgrading our street lighting networks.

Antonio Pías Gómez, Director of Distribution at the Power Supply Enterprise (UNE), told Granma about their present and future activity.

It went without saying that we couldn’t keep people’s households in the dark while we worked on the street lighting system, ultimately designed to light up not only the main roads in our communities but also well-attended places like parks, schools, hospitals, groceries, etc., he remarked.

Street lighting was a part of the network restoration plans we couldn’t possibly cover at the time. We had to concentrate instead on our networks, most of which had been used for over 40 years and were therefore in very poor shape, to solve low voltage problems that were arising in increasingly wide areas and already affecting up to one million households. A project was drawn up and approved, and once we had the money we started to work along Havana’s coastal region in 2006, the outset of a nationwide plan scheduled until 2009.

For all the little things we did about street lighting, especially in Havana, this year can be said to mark the beginning of a serious work, Pías Gómez said.

Of the 262 million dollars allocated to repairs, 10 million will go to our street lighting system, including plans to restore, complete or install 182 thousand new street lamps in all communities where electrification works are scheduled.

He pointed out that it’s not for UNE to decide any priorities. We just can’t take decisions from here; each province will set its own goals through the local Provincial and Municipal Parliaments and their Councils, as they’re the ones who know what they need most. UNE will simply send them the street lamps and they will choose where to place them. More than 7,100 of them have been already delivered to our provinces and the Isle of Youth; another 10,000 will arrive between next April and May, and we’re in the final stages of contracting 40,000 more. This covers 25% of our plans, so the idea this year is to contract some 120,000 of nearly 200,000 that we need for a three-year program.

These are high quality, 100-to-150-watt sodium lamps, he explained, mostly made in China and sold for 72 dollars a piece. We buy the post and the lamp, and then assemble them here at UNE’s Enterprise of Electromechanical Products. We also replace old lamp posts if need be.

Every province has a program in place to restore and modernize street lighting that is not just about replacing lamps, as Pías said: studies about each street, community and neighborhood lead up to individual projects based on case-by-case technical requirements.

In general, all mercury lamps (white lighting) and the few incandescent light bulbs still in use are being changed for the brighter and more lasting sodium lamps (yellowish light).

Thanks to its own separate plan, Havana has long seen some of its avenues gradually benefited by processes of modernization. Thoroughfares like 25th and Paseo Avenues, 100th Street and more than 40 main roads and arteries have been or will be refurbished this year. The whole design for the capital city is based as well on the increasing vehicular traffic.

Works will soon begin to replace and improve all the 157 street lamps along Vía Monumental (which crosses the tunnel under the bay) and take measures to prevent the car accidents that account for the destruction of an average 7 lamp posts every year.

We’ve been busy in all provinces, especially in the eastern part of Cuba.

Going back to the issues mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, the Director of Distribution ventures to say that the number of people’s requests will grow. Hardly surprising, if we keep in mind that new needs arise as you improve and help return the service to normal in small villages and settlements because then people start making demands about ‘the light bulb at the corner, which has been off for years’, for example. We’re aware of and will find a proper solution for those little problems too, remarked.

Every program and subprogram of the Energy Revolution is based on lasting, professional and systematic solutions, in keeping with the route plotted by the Cuban government. And we’re working on that, he assured.

 

La Habana, viernes 11 de abril de 2008. Año 12 / Número 102

Noticias sobre el alumbrado público

No estuvo entre las primeras prioridades de la Revolución Energética pero desde el principio se incluyó. Antonio Pías Gómez, director de Distribución de la Unión Eléctrica, explica a Granma qué se hace y cuáles son las perspectivas