Comments on: Costa Rica’s ICE asks for 13.7 percent increase in electric rates

By: Larry Worsham

Larry Worsham — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 16:08:00 +0000

It makes everyone with sense leave. I was actually told by a judge, after fighting a seven year false claim on my property and loosing, that gringos will always loose in these cases and I should never have fought it. Fortunately, the claim was only for cash and not for the property.

I still love, and visit, Costa Rica but wouldn’t live there again.

By: Cmarston

Cmarston — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:17:00 +0000

Be careful what you are wishing for. Check out what deregulating the electrical industry has done to the prices here in the US…..

By: prdatki

prdatki — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 03:47:00 +0000

This is the same dummies that pay their employes 2/3 times more than people in the Private sector make. Fire the top 100 no benefits nada. You will see you rates go down. ICE should be turned over to the Private sector.

By: Derryl Hermanutz

Derryl Hermanutz — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 21:27:00 +0000

No, it is more like ICE trying to accommodate the neoliberal belief in “privatization” that ICE signed contracts with private electricity generators and now finds itself with excess electricity, and high priced contracts for private generation. By pandering to the self-serving ideological arguments of private electricity “producers”, ICE now has to up its price to electricity “consumers”, in order to pay for the high priced private electricity. ICE can produce wind and solar for the same cheap price private owners can produce it. But wind and solar are intermittent and ICE has to ensure a backup supply so CR has enough electricity when wind and solar are down. A nation’s electrical generation and transmission system is a “natural monopoly”, if “the government” is “responsible” for supplying the base load come hell or high water. Allowing private businesses into a natural monopoly is a mistake, unless they are contractually required to lose money to supply a consistent amount of electricity when it is unprofitable for them to do so. What we have here in CR is the worst of both worlds, with the government provider suffering excess capacity and being saddled with high priced contracts that guarantee to purchase electricity from private suppliers whether the nation needs the electricity or not.

By: Ken Morris

Ken Morris — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 19:34:00 +0000

The funny part is how little shame ICE has. To ask for a rate increase right after its bloated salaries were made public and its employees staged a strike objecting to their being insulted by the divulging of this information takes the cake. You would think that ICE officials would at least wait until the anger against them subsided before asking for a raise, but not these brazen bastards.

By: paddicakes

paddicakes — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 18:53:00 +0000

This sort of contradiction in polices is what makes businesses leave CR

By: disgusted

disgusted — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 18:32:00 +0000

Make no sense at all. Except the CEO’S want more money. Never about a cut in power bills. I guess they are selling the excess CR power to Panama , maybe Nicaragua does anyone know?

By: Larry Worsham

Larry Worsham — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 18:03:00 +0000

Yet with Arenal full, according to the previous article, they have more electricity than will be used.