For most of the last two weeks, the Corporación Dominicana de Electricidad (CDE) has been reducing the length and frequency of power cuts both in the capital and the interior. On Thursday, 4 July, the CDE’s general administrator Amilcar Romero told the news media that the state-owned electricity company was generating 1,200,000 kilowatts, 100,000 more than the nation’s daily demand.
Mr. Romero said that the main reason for the improvement in the electricity supply has been the repair and renovation of several CDE power generators, whose improved condition has added 550,000 kilowatts per day to its output (the time when these generators were out of service was when most power cuts were experienced). Despite the increased power generation, cuts have been experienced in some parts of the capital and the interior but, according to Mr. Romero, this is due to faulty lines in the CDE’s distribution network.
The World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank are currently lending financial support to the CDE to repair the damaged and/or old distribution lines, which cause the corporation to lose almost 30% of the power generated by its stations. Another problem, which the CDE’s public relations department has repeated to the news media and the general public, and was touched on again by Mr. Romero last week, is the problem of customers who fail to pay for their electricity and the illegal connections which provide whole areas with a free service.
Despite the improvement in the CDE’s output of late, the president of the Asociación de Industrias, Celso Marranzini, told the Listin Diario newspaper that although generation is up, the company’s debt also continues to go up.
He criticized the “administrative disorder”, particularly referring to the failure of the CDE to effectively receive proper remuneration for its services, claiming that only 45% of users actually pay their bills.
Business and industry have been very hard hit by power cuts in the past, as their production costs rise considerably when they have to provide their own electricity with generators that consume large amounts of fuel.