Honduras stepping up actions to boost power grid

Honduras’ state power company Enee launched an international tender to increase dispatch capacity.

The call entails the rental, startup and maintenance of four 138/13.8kV, 50MVA mobile substations at the Bermejo, La Puerta, Choloma and Santa Fe substations.

Depending on demand, Enee may request the units be moved to other substations. Procurement information is available here.

The government is relying on mobile equipment to shore up the grid until new power generation capacity comes online in the coming years.

The power system suffers from prolonged outages and failures, which officials blame on alleged lack of sector investment by past administrations as well as climate-related phenomena and fires caused by high temperatures.

According to local private enterprise council Cohep, there were 21,678 incidents between April 2022 and this April that left Honduras without 32,371 hours of electricity or an average of four hours per day.

“These difficulties of the national electrical system have been accentuated significantly so far in 2024, which, from January to May 2024, has already failed to supply 56,153MWh, at an average impact value economic benefit for the country of US$75.5 million, equivalent to 1.89 billion lempiras,” Cohep said in a bulletin.

Numbers from national dispatch center CND show that consumption and maximum demand in May hit 1,082GWh and 1,950MW, respectively, up 12% and nearly 9%, year-on-year.

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Meanwhile, Enee took over operation of the 104MW Patuca III hydro plant, whose operation had been outsourced since 2020.

Authorities expect that, with this, the state will save around 96mn lempiras (US$4mn) per year.

Patuca III is the country’s second largest hydroelectric plant after Francisco Morazán (300MW), also known as El Cajón and operated by Enee.

Local paper Tiempo reported that the state operator plans to issue a call at month-end to build a 150km transmission line from Patuca to Danlí that will cost US$60mn.

And as part of the national loss reduction program, Enee launched two bidding processes to acquire advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). Details are available here and here.

“Currently, work is being carried out to install centralized AMI in Tegucigalpa, Choluteca, La Ceiba and Juticalpa, showing a substantial reduction in losses of more than 90%, going from 40% to just 4%, which translates into a monthly saving of 1.4mn lempiras in each sector,” Enee said in an update.