Costa Rica’s largest provider of electricity, CNFL has decided to invest $4m into the Balsa Superior Hydro Electric Plant in between San Ramon and Alfaro Ruiz. However CNFL is part of the ICE Group who have a monopoly on the telecommunications market of Costa Rica and they deem the project to be inviable and highly risky.
The main issue that ICE and CNFL are having is that CNFL says that it has acquired the land and performed all the necessary studies in order to go ahead and perform this project. However the President of ICE, Pedro Quiros stated that these do not exist. It was stated that ICE had told CNFL to halt the project in 2003 however this had not happened.
The CNFL requires the extra 25km of tunnels as the land currently does not have enough water to support the planned plant. However Quiros said that the more tunnels there are means that there is little water in the area and therefore the project will not have sufficient water to generate electricity.
The planned plant would produce 132 megawatts of electricity, enough for over 100,000 families. Costa Rica produces the majority of its energy via hydroelectric means and its long term plan is to become solely sufficient on this type of electricity.
