QCOSTARICA — On Monday, May 13, electricity rationing announced by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) will begin.
Consumers are asked to immediately reduce non-essential electricity consumption as much as possible, turning off lights not used during the day and all electrical devices not needed.
The rationing will impact all eight electricity distribution companies in Costa Rica, who have the obligation to inform their customers of the areas and times in which electricity will be interrupted.
Customers can find out the details of the outages in their community on social media networks, their provider websites, and official communication channels.
For now, rationing is expected to continue until Friday, May 17. However, ICE does not rule out that the rationing could continue to the end of the month. It all depends if it rains or not. If the situation does not improve, the rationing could be extended for two or three more weeks.
“There is always a possibility. When you work with nature, well, sometimes it is unpredictable. I can’t rule anything out at this moment. Some time ago we said: if the conditions are maintained, there will be no rationing, but the conditions changed so now we have projected conditions that say that rationing can be for a short period of time, but if the conditions are not what We are anticipating that they could be extended,” explained Marco Acuña, ICE’s executive president
The power outages, expected to be between 1 and 3 hours, will occur between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm and “in extreme cases”, could be between 5:00 am and 10:00 pm.
In some areas of Pavas and Curridabat, there were reports of power cuts Thursday afternoon due to a failure in the Reventazon energy production plant. Reports indicate that power was cut in those areas for about 90 minutes to “reduce the load” on the national electrical system in order to avoid an even greater emergency.
“To avoid a major situation in the Sistema Eléctrico Nacional (SEN) – National Electrical System -, the decision was made to reduce load in some sectors of the country for a short period of time,” said Roberto Quirós, electricity manager at ICE.
It has been 17 years since the country last faced power outages of this kind.
The major reason for the current situation is the high dependence, 74%, on hydroelectric plants. If there is no rain or little rain, this year affected by El Niño phenomenum and reservoir levels drop, production is severely affected.
More than 10% of the remaining energy is produced by wind and if the wind slows down, generation is also affected.
At this time both situations are occurring: little rainfall after a time in which the reservoirs were already low and a reduction in wind speed.
Another reason – according to ICE – is that the contracting of private companies that produce thermal energy, where fuel is burned to generate electricity to begin in February was delayed, forcing the utility to use accumulated resources.
This places ICE between a rock and a hard place, with little that can be done to increase the generation of electricity. “Everything is operating at its maximum and according to the very few available resources,” noted Quirós.
Costa Rica could buy energy from its neighboring countries, but they are currently facing similar challenges. Mexico reduced its exports to Guatemala, prompting Guatemala to halt its exports, El Salvador to limit exports, and Panama to stop exports.
President Rodrigo Chaves indicated that he is holding conversations at the “presidential level” with his counterparts in the region, to try to help each other amid this scenario. He expressed optimism about the potential outcome.
Chaves also took the opportunity to accuse the previous administration, that of Carlos Alvarado Quesada, of stopping the Diquís hydroelectric megaproject. The US$3.6 billion project never materialized, among the reasons because the country was over-installed.
“ICE preached for years that it had excess generation capacity and that more should not be generated. They had fears regarding advancing in Diquís project,” La Nacion quoted former president Alavado during his administration (2018-2022).
Chaves did note on Wednesday that given the lack of rain, not even Diquís would have been able to get the country out of this situation. For this reason, he considers that the ideal is to diversify the electrical matrix: bet more on solar and wind energy. And that he agrees with the opening of the electricity market, within the framework of the new strategy to promote the microchip and semiconductor industry in Costa Rica can be met.
“We are going to need tons of electrical energy,” Chaves commented.
