Last week, the administrator of the Corporación Dominicana de Electricidad, the state-owned electric corporation, said that with the start-up of the new Los Minas generators, the CDE has 50,000 more kilowatt hours than the demand. He said that Los Mina III and IV entered the system, contributing 236,000 kilowatts per hour for an overall total of 1,100,000 kilowatts available in the CDE grid. As a result, service interruptions should be down to a minimum.
Nevertheless, the availability of sufficient generating capacity is just one of the problems that confronts the CDE. It has chosen to rely on private generating companies and must now come up with sufficient cash to pay for the electricity. The large private generating companies recently cut the CDE’s supplies for arrears in payment. One of the main problems is that while the generation of power has been privatized, this has not happened with the collection of accounts from consumers, leaving the CDE with a large deficit that must be covered with injections of funds by the Presidency.