MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Uruguay among the countries in Latam with the highest power costs
However Uruguay is among the leading countries in clean power production Uruguay is among the Latin-American and Caribbean countries with the highest power costs according to a paper from the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, Bloomberg and New Energy Finance. This is extensive both for residential consumers and for manufacturing and large consumers.
The report shows that homes pay an average of 26 US cents per kilowatt/hour, while large consumers on average 208 dollars per Megawatt/hour. This means that homes have the highest rate in South America and the fourth highest among 26 countries surveyed in the region and the Caribbean.
The document points out that in this context of high prices, large consumers could feel attracted to bilateral power contracts with renewable energy commercial projects, while small consumers could take advantage of other measurement policies to find solutions at a small scale.
Uruguay ranked 6 out of 26 countries surveyed in the region and improved four points over last year when it comes to “Climatescope 2013” on new frontiers for energy investments with low emissions of carbon in Latam and the Caribbean.
However the document also points out that despite the fact Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in South America it has 304 MW of clean energy installed, which is equivalent to 11% of the total 2.8 GW from the region. The report also points out that Uruguay is targeting 15% renewable energy by 2015 and it “all looks as if Uruguay is going to reach that goal”, since Uruguay “has become a very dynamic market in the wind energy sector”.
The report also anticipated that in coming years Uruguay will increase “significantly” the capacity and investments in renewable energies.
To elaborate on the paper and its conclusions four aspects were taken into account: the most relevant in the current framework for policies; the structure of the energy market; the level of installed capacity for clean energy in the web and size of the market.
This is followed by investment in clean energy and loans for projects referred to climate change, carbon low emissions deals and value chains of clean energy and conditions for the carbon emission compensation projects plus corporate actions towards the mitigation of such emissions.
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Read all commentsThe UK has only moderate wind strength when compared with Uruguay but that is a blessing and a curse.
Oct 21st, 2013 - 11:41 am 0The UK windmills mange just 8% on average of the “installed” power rating for all the wind farms both onshore and offshore. Uruguay will exceed that by a small amount I have no doubt but there are other difficulties. All windmills are notoriously easy to wreck in high and gusting winds and from my personal experience we have plenty of that. The control gear cannot overcome the high inertias that the blades have before the excess energy wrecks the transmissions and usually sets fire to the oil within them leading to total loss of the ‘mill.
UTE, the government owned monopoly electricity provider is lamentably managed and all aspects of the business are overstaffed with numpties in my experience. If you visit the place because you have not received your monthly bill you get a 50 pesos fine for being late in paying it! And the bills are delivered by UTE employed people!! Apparently if the bill does not arrive in time to pay it YOU are to blame for NOT paying it. You couldn’t make this up.
We pay about UY$ 2,600 per month on average (US$ 122 per month) but the local people won’t be paying that much because they just don’t have the electrical equipment that we have, but I know several people who struggle to pay their UTE bills as it is.
The government screw the citizens at every turn. They have failed to move with the times and have gone down the sheep route with windmills, just at a time when the UK are removing a windmill farm for not coming up to 7% of the “installed” power. And of course we are taxed at each step plus VAT.
Commie governments: I have shit better things, but it won’t be for much longer and Pepe will be gone.
60% comes from hydro dams long since paid off and with the abundant rainfall this % should rise. But will we get our UTE bills reduced? Like hell we wont. More than 22% of our bills is IVA (value added tax) which the srcounging government cant afford to lose if electricity costs are reduced
Oct 26th, 2013 - 03:52 am 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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