Santo Domingo.– The saona island It already works one hundred percent with renewable energy, thanks to a plant that was commissioned these days and that offers continuous electricity supply to one of the most touristic places in the Dominican Republic until now without electricity and without drinking water.
The Bayahíbe Electricity Company (CEB) is the architect of the development and commissioning of the Saona plant, which thus becomes the first and only island in the hemisphere with 100% renewable energy. As explained by CEB, a subsidiary of the Punta Cana-Macao Energy Consortium (CEPM), this plant has an initial storage capacity of 5 megawatt hours (MWh) that “could be expanded based on the economic and social development of the community.”
It is made up of a structure of photovoltaic modules that store energy in sophisticated batteries and that provide electrical service twenty-four hours a day on this island in the Caribbean Sea, famous for its beaches and natural paradises.
BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE AND ECONOMIC BENEFITS
This will improve the quality of life of the more than 600 residents of Saona and its economy, since until now the lack of energy in businesses and restaurants only allowed the million tourists who each year visit this island of 110 to spend a maximum of four hours. square kilometers in the southeast of the Dominican Republic.
“I am very happy with the CEB project. I thought that at my age I would not see this advance of light. Now I can watch television, turn on the fan (fan) or use the iron,” says Bienvenida Díaz, according to a company note.
In the same sense, Mercedes Rodríguez expressed herself, to whom the arrival of energy will help her soap-making business by being able to use an electric grinder. “With machines everything is easier. Now I will start what I have always dreamed of ”, she affirms.
This is a model that Rolando González Bunster, president of InterEnergy Group, parent company of CEPM and CEB, does not rule out being able to replicate it in other areas of the Dominican Republic and on other islands around the world to promote the development of clean and environmentally friendly technology. .
González Bunster highlights the benefits that clean energy will provide to Saona, including access to pure drinking water, electric mobility and the installation of a cold chain, essential for fishing in the area.
CONTROL CONSUMPTION THROUGH PREPAYMENT
In order for the inhabitants of the island to have greater control over their consumption, the service will be provided through a prepaid system.
The project also includes the creation of an intelligent network of modules in different points of the habitable area of the island, together with the correction and improvement of the electrical infrastructure of more than 120 houses, businesses and commercial premises in Saona. It is also accompanied by the restructuring of the electrical infrastructure of the school and the island’s polyclinic, which will have free energy for better operation.
The CEB is a subsidiary company of the Punta Cana–Macao Energy Consortium, a generating, distributing and trading company of electrical energy with thirty years of history and which currently has more than 300 MW of installed capacity.
Through more than 1,200 kilometers of high, medium and low voltage networks, it supplies energy to more than 65% of the Dominican hotel offer, which makes it an important driver of tourism development in Punta Cana, Bávaro, Macao, Uvero Alto, Miches, Bayahibe and La Romana.
CEB’s parent company, InterEnergy Group, is one of the largest clean energy companies in Latin America and the Caribbean and operates power generation plants in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Jamaica, Chile and Uruguay.
