Costa Rica's publicly-owned National Power and Light Company is requesting an increase in electricity rates that could raise basic rates for its customers by 36 percent.
A top State Department official in Washington, D.C. said Central America — which relies heavily on diesel and fuel oil for power generation — is now in an ideal position to cut electricity costs by introducing alternative sources like natural gas and renewable energy.
Costa Rica in 2014 earned some $3.6 million by selling its surplus electricity to other Central American countries, ARESEP reported. Business leaders hope ICE will again sell excess hydroenergy to neighboring countries, and in turn, lower electrity costs in Costa Rica.
The halls were decked with lights and wreaths at the offices of the Union of Private-Sector Chambers and Associations but there was little holiday cheer in the group’s latest business survey. Over 60 percent of businesses surveyed in the report said that they did not plan to hire any new employees in 2015, according to results released Wednesday.
The executive president of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute, Carlos Obregón, on Wednesday morning said in a press conference the agency would file a request with the Public Services Regulatory Authority for a 13.2 percent increase in electricity rates for the first half of 2015. President Luis Guillermo Solís, who promised no new electricity hikes for 18 months, appeared to have no idea what Obregón was talking about.
In the ongoing process to provide all electricity consumers in Costa Rica the ability to generate energy from small-scale renewable sources and exchange it on the national grid for kilowatt credits, the Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) on Oct. 2 approved a methodology proposal for how to calculate rates at which those credits will be issued.
A day after it approved rate hikes last week for the Costa Rican Electricity Institute, or ICE, the Public Services Regulatory Authority on Friday approved a decrease in electricity rates for all of the country’s electricity distributors. That change will take effect on Oct. 1.
