CAMAGÜEY.- Professor Rafael Pila Pérez stands out not only for being a encyclopedia in internal medicine, but for his privileged memory of events that took place during his childhood, when he was barely eight or nine years old.

He keeps freshly in his mind that during World War Two, in his hometown Elia, seven miles south of Guáimaro, that used to belong to Camagüey province, the ancient electric company, property of a Puerto Rican, after eight o’clock in the night suspended the service and the last thing you could listen to on the radio, an hour earlier, was about the war situation in the space El reporte Esso.

After the armed conflict, the electric plant continued to guarantee electricity for Elia, Guáimaro, Palo Seco, Cascorro, Hatuey and a part of Sibanicú, that received the epithet of Dark town, a time where carbide an alcohol lamps were very much used for lighting.

Camagüey, with a current territorial extension smaller to the one in 1959, when it comprehended the territories from Jatibonico (today in Sancti Spíritus) to the ancient plant Francisco, in Las Tunas, has an installed capacity of energetic production equivalent to over twelve times the 43,5 MW that existed back then.

The growth is due to the impetuous development that the Revolution brought, with the construction since 1964 of the Thermal power station 10 de Octubre, in Nuevitas, place that seven years later installed the second turbogenerator, fruit of the solidarity and the commercial agreements with the extinct Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon).

One of the highest priorities for every country is electrification, without it there is no possible development to face industrialization, the agricultural and social programs. No one should believe that all the population from Camagüey had access to this kind of service.

Camagüey has passed to a superior phase of the electric generation in thermal bases, through the system of distributed generation, with locations of generators that use full oil and diesel as a combustible, isolated groups, and finally it forays in renewable power sources though the use of solar energy to change the energetic matrix in Cuba in the next decade, process that will suppose the 24% from this technology friendly to the environment.

Cuba, this way, will stop sending annually over six millions tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, will reduce imports and save millions of dollars, if we consider that each ton of fuel acquired by the country is worth proximately 700 USD.

As part of its social policy, the Cuban government does not abandon its children, thus, it conceived the electrification with solar panels of over 1 400 houses in Camagüey, far from the National Electric System, formula to elevate the population’s standard of living and the use of renewable energy before the exhaustion of the traditional hydrocarbons.

This part depends on a joint action in which intervene the Electric Company in the preparation of equipment, Copextel in the set up and the work for the maintenance of technology and the beneficiaries in the installation of the supports for the panel, generally pilings at the preset height.

According to the technology, the panel has a capacity of a kilowatt and it favors the lighting of five Led lights of 7 Watts and equipments such as radio, television set and a fan, not comprehending electric cookers, refrigerators and turbines.

In spite that the United States insist in destoying the social system in Cuba and does unspeakable things for that, the energetic development will not stop to continue lighting the future.