Santo Domingo.- Electricity superintendent  Francisco Méndez on Tuesday defended the Government’s investment to achieve cheaper, more efficient energy, and to establish a more robust national grid.

He said the construction of a natural gas power plant of up to 600 megawatts by the United Arab Emirates in the Dominican northwest will greatly benefit the country, which in the last five or six years hasn’t added capacity to its system due to the government’s financial difficulties. “But now, announced by a strong, solid state, with sufficient resources and which already has investments in Dominican Republic, fruit of president Leonel Fernandez’s visit, this will be possible.”

Méndez said the Cogentrix plant’s conversion to natural gas and the one the United Arab Emirates will build would boost the country’s energy production and benefit the user.  “Then more investments are necessary and with more investments in energy generation from coal and natural gas, we won’t depend as much on fossil fuels that are very volatile in the markets.”

The official, interviewed on CDN 2, said while production of the Los Mina turbines cost at around eight cents the dollar, AES Andres’ is around 3 cents, for which adding almost 600 megawatts to the system at an average price 50 percent below operative prices will lower costs, and the distributors could have a acquisition cost of 30 or 40 percent.