by Rod Hughes
The daily La Nacion today reported more bad news about the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) but it was not as bad as it might have been. The bad: The new, three-month-old Cariblanca hydroelectric generation plant at Sarapiquí is out of operation indefinitely, only 19 days after President Oscar Arias inaugurated it.
But the bright spot is that ICE spokespersons say that the latest in a dismal series of breakdowns for ICE, the principal electricity supplier for the country, will not result in a repetition of the regional blackouts that affected business, industry and home users in April. Moreover, ICE director Teofilo de la Torre says contractually it is the responsibility of the Croatian-Slavic firm that installed it, Koncar Litostrof, to put Cariblanco back on line.
But the breakdown in the ventilation system of one of the generators may mean that ICE will have to resort to more thermal plant generation, meaning more cost in hydrocarbon fuels. ICE assistant manager Carlos Obregón told La Nación that is “probable” but by no means certain and depends on the water levels at other hydroelectric generators in the country. Despite recent heavy rains, the levels have had little time to recuperate from an extra-long and unusually parched dry season.
Current national demand for energy is estimated at 1,300 megawatts of which 92 is hydrocarbon fuel generated.
(See recent article on this newsfeed regarding the incredible series of generator failures that led up to the April 18 nationwide outage and the rationing that followed.)