by Fernanda Matarrita Chaves

Starting from Monday, May 13, Costa Rica will experience power outages that initially would extend for five days. In anticipation of these imminent rationings, the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) announced that it would prepare contingency plans.

According to information released on Thursday by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), each power supply company will communicate to its subscribers the schedules of outages, which will occur in three-hour intervals between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m.

The measure will primarily affect residential areas and will seek to minimize impacts on health centers and industrial areas. There are no specific details regarding educational centers, so La Nación consulted the MEP about the strategy.

“We will establish contact with the electricity providers to take the necessary actions and generate contingency plans for the places and dates where these measures will be implemented,” responded Sofía Ramírez, Deputy Minister of Administration.

Ramírez added that staff have also been instructed to make rational use of energy resources, in response to ICE’s call, as one of the urgencies is to reduce electrical demand.

The extension of the measure will also depend on the availability of generation sources such as water and wind.

Currently, some educational centers shorten their hours due to water supply cuts.

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