Latin America, Caribbean power roundup

The Dominican Republic government's monetary board proposed a change to the assets evaluation regulation to improve access to bank lending for renewable energy projects.

The modification would allow equipment such as photovoltaic panels and wind turbines to be accepted as credit guarantees, the energy and mines ministry reported.

ALSO READ DATA SNAPSHOT: Dominican Republic power outlook

***

The Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica will launch a US$12mn UNDP renewable energy and energy efficiency project for the public sector in early 2017, starting with a US$2mn component that will benefit six public hospitals.

***

Ecuador's energy efficiency and renewable energies institute INER and state power generator Termopichincha kicked off an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) pilot project at the Quevedo II thermoelectric plant.

ORC uses residual heat to increase the temperature of an organic fluid which has a boiling point lower than water and whose steam is used in turn to generate additional electricity.

***

Costa Rica's public services regulator Aresep approved a reduction of electricity rates across state power company ICE's systems that comes into effect on January 1.

Generation will fall 3.28%, transmission 11.12%, distribution 6.69% and public lighting 6.1%. ICE had requested increases of 9.75%, 5.85%, 9.75% and 25.1%, respectively.

The drop does not take into account the Reventazón hydroelectric plant due to the lack of sufficient information, and some costs and preliminary spending by ICE in 2016 that will be valued during the 2016 price settlement, said the watchdog.