The Turkish Power Barges Leave Cuba for Good

Were they a good deal?

By Amado Viera

HAVANA TIMES – Surrounded by the same secrecy that accompanied their arrival, in recent weeks, the Turkish floating power plants have begun to leave Cuba.

By the end of February, only two of these plants remained in Havana, with a combined capacity of around 300 megawatts (MW). These are the remnants of a fleet that in 2023 consisted of eight vessels supplying a quarter of the electricity produced on the island.

In 2022, Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O defended the power barges, describing them as the “fastest and most effective way to increase our generation capacity.” His statements, made during a podcast with President Miguel Diaz-Canel, did not provide details about the agreements signed between Cuba’s State Electric Company (UNE) and Karadeniz Holding, the owner and operator of the plants.

A common question among UNE employees and other electrical specialists was why Cuba contracted the Turkish plants when the island already dozens of industrial generator sets with similar technology that also used fuel oil as their primary fuel.

“It’s like owning a car and leaving it in the garage to rent another one that is practically the same. While it’s true that some backup generator sets needed repairs, it is highly likely that those investments would have been cheaper than renting the power barges and covering their operational costs,” reasoned an electrical engineer from Santa Clara who worked for nearly a decade on fuel oil engine installations in that central city.

During the four national power system collapses in 2022 and 2024, Cuba’s fuel oil generator sets revealed an additional advantage: their ability to start “cold”—meaning on their own—unlike their Turkish counterparts, which require an external power supply to start their engines.

These failures of the national system demonstrated to UNE executives that the recovery had to be undertaken through regional subsystems. The creation of these subsystems relies on synchronizing the generator sets to produce the electricity needed to reconnect prioritized circuits. From there, thermoelectric plants and the rest of the grid are reactivated. Each region must be capable of generating the initial power to launch its own subsystem—something that the floating power plants were unable to do.

A Matter of Numbers

It is unlikely that we will ever know whether the decision to reduce the number of power barges in Cuba was influenced by their technical inability to adapt to the island’s complex energy reality. Nor should we expect the authorities to release any information on the matter, as they have refused to do so until now.

Karadeniz Holding’s history is full of controversies regarding the negotiation and operation of its floating power plants. In countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, and South Africa, contract irregularities and a lack of environmental studies have been exposed by investigative journalists. Recently, Ecuador was forced to contract several of the company’s vessels to address an energy crisis, one of which had been stationed in Havana until recently.

The negotiations between Ecuadorian authorities and the Turkish corporation were widely criticized for their lack of transparency: President Daniel Noboa’s government did not put the contract for the first power plants up for public bidding and only informed the National Assembly once the energy price had already been set.

In Cuba, the process was even more opaque. The authorities have never disclosed how much or how payments for the power barges were structured. The only way to estimate these costs is to use Ecuador’s figures as a reference, though their agreement conditions likely differed from Cuba’s.

The plants contracted by Ecuador were set at a base rate of 10.37 cents per kilowatt generated. Of that amount, the Turkish company agreed to deduct 3.4 cents, payable to the Ecuadorian company supplying the fuel. Ultimately, Karadeniz retained 6.97 cents per kilowatt.

In 2023—the last year for which Cuban authorities released official figures—the Turkish power barges generated 4,494 gigawatts (GW), which could have cost at least 313 million dollars. This figure does not include the fuel supply, which, even at preferential prices, would have accumulated a bill exceeding 155 million dollars. By comparison, the gas-fired plants jointly managed by UNE and the Canadian company Sherritt sold electricity at 5.74 cents per kilowatt in 2023.

At the end of 2024, the statistical analysis site Foresight Cuba noted that while the power output of Energas gas-fired plants (that account for only 745 GW) cannot be directly compared to thermoelectric plants, power barges, or generator sets , increasing their capacity through investment in the petroleum industry would be beneficial. The economic and environmental reasons for investing in gas-fired power generation are compelling: apart from renewables, they are the plants with the lowest carbon footprint and the lowest maintenance costs.

The lack of official data makes it difficult to compare power generation technologies. However, based on the limited statistics published in news reports and academic papers, power barges appear to be cost-competitive only when compared to renewable energy sources—particularly due to the high operating costs of renewables during their startup phase. Even diesel generator sets operate at roughly the same efficiency margins as the Turkish plants.

“The ‘problem’ is likely in the wages of the foreign operators and the way maintenance cycles are followed. Foreign operators earn much higher salaries than Cuban workers, and they are paid in foreign currency. It’s also unlikely that maintenance cycles are rushed or skipped, as often happens in Cuban industries. Doing things properly has a cost that is reflected in the final energy price, although in Cuba, we are not used to paying it,” explained the engineer from Santa Clara.

Another crucial factor in the cost structure of the power barges is the fuel they use. Although fuel oil is one of the least expensive petroleum byproducts, its use in power generation represents a significant and unusual expense. Typically, thermal plants burn crude oil, coal, or natural gas—especially when operating continuously rather than for just a few hours a day.

The departure of the floating power plants coincides with the construction of 55 solar parks supplied by China under a bilateral agreement about which little is known. The “Turkish chapter” is closing amid the worst wave of blackouts in decades and uncertainty about whether the shift to renewables will finally end the darkness that millions of Cubans have grown accustomed to. The Turkish power plants failed to do so.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.