Dominican Republic spends more on power generation
The need for reliable power supply, has forced more and more companies in the Dominican Republic to make significant investments to generate their own power and ensure stability in the supply of this vital input for their production processes.
An example of this is the cement industry that has decided to invest over US$100m in building its own generating plants, reports the Association of Dominican Republic cement producers, Adocem. The production process of the cement industry requires, necessarily, a stable and reliable supply 24hrs-365 days, so as to guarantee the quality parameters of the final product.
The low variations in reliability and power quality of the network in the Dominican Republic has meant not only the need to invest resources in self-generation, but the consumption of one kilowatt-hour is up to 50 percent more expensive than rates of the National Electric System because of the high costs associated with production, networking and transmission of energy in a self-generation facility on a smaller scale.
This need for self-generation investment, which is not typical in the cement industry, represents not only dedicating additional investment resources, but to absorb the differential cost of electricity and negatively affects the competitiveness of Dominican cement against other markets.
This item is not negligible when taking into account that the cement industry itself generates approximately 105MW, equivalent to approximately 5% of average energy demand of the country (2127.00 MW), which if not self-generated by the cement industry, would come directly from the National Electrical – thus slowing their already limited supply.
Published under Cement News
