IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2017 - 50

For many years, this generation was owned and administered by ICE, complemented by small private generators
and a few utility-scale distributed generators. However, this
has changed due to the increasing penetration of self-generation units installed by residential, commercial, and industrial customers who have found an attractive opportunity to
replace some or all the energy sold by the DNOs.
Costa Rica took its first steps in distributed generation
back in 2010, when ICE launched a five-year pilot project
expecting to host up to 10 MW for self-generation units in its
license area. The project offered very attractive conditions,
for a fixed period of 15 years, to customers who decided to
install a generating system in their premises. These customers

were exempted from installation
costs or access fees, as they were
covered by the DNO.
The pilot project was designed
to be a living laboratory with the
goal of producing commercial and
technical understanding for ICE
personnel. By the end of the project in 2015, 366 customers were
involved: a total of 3,050 kW effectively connected to the grid and
8,220 kW awaiting for the connection permits. Due to the favorable
weather conditions in Costa Rica,
rooftop PV systems were the most
attractive technology for self-generation-as it can be seen in Table 2.
This pilot project not only
helped the DNO gain technical and
commercial experience but also
strengthened, at the time, the incipient rooftop PV market and increased the number of vendors. The
200 km
penetration level and concentration of PVs were so low that it was
not possible to quantify or witness
any network impact caused by the
new installations.
Although not part of the original plan, the pilot project awakened the interest of customers served by other DNOs. In particular, the National Company of Power and Light (Compañía
Nacional de Fuerza y Luz, CNFL-a DNO in the metropolitan area of Costa Rica) faced a growing number of customers
requesting permission to install rooftop PV systems (see Figure 2). Although commercial conditions were not as good as the
ones offered to customers part of ICE's pilot project, the local
media and PV vendors played a major role in promoting the
technology all over the country. This pushed ARESEP (the regulator) and the Ministry of Energy and Environment to create new
rules and modify existing regulations to account for new actors in
the Costa Rican electricity scenario: the self-generators.

table 1. Generation-installed capacity
per technology (2015).

table 2. Results of the pilot project
carried out by ICE.

Legend
CNFL
COOPEALFARO
JASEC
COOPESANTOS
ESPH
COOPELESCA
COOPEGUANACASTE
ICE
50

100

150

figure 1. The license areas of DNOs in Costa Rica.

Technology

Installed Capacity (%)

Solar

0.03

Wind

9.07

Hydro

63.09

Biomass

Technology

Number of
Customers

Total Kilowatts

Solar

360

6,758.85

Solar + Wind

5.38

1.30

Biomass

4,500

Geothermal

7.09

Wind

Fossils

19.42

Hydro

7.5

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