The Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE) is taking measures to protect the National Electric System from being affected again by a failure in the regional interconnected system, like the one that caused the nationwide blackout in July 1st.

Costa Rica is part of a regional interconnected system of 1,820 kilometers of transmission lines. The production systems the country has allows its isolation in different events that affect other countries frequently, however, the failure that occurred in July 1st was caused by an outage of 500 megawatts (40 %) in the system , an output so significant that the existing protection system was not able to handle it.

According to ICE a special security system has now been activated. This protection will affect the three interconnection lines of Costa Rica with Panama and will activate when the power flow coming from the Panama substation exceeds 100 megawatts, it will also be activated if the frequency of transmission exceeds 61Hz. In distribution networks the optimal frequency is of 60Hz.

If any of this conditions occurs the protection will disconnect the Costa Rican system from the Panama link and the regional system. This will prevent the overcharge to affect Costa Rica’s network and will prevent it from propagating to Central America.

“The idea is that Costa Rica is isolated from Panama and the rest of the electric line that connects Central America. This measure was already approved the by the Regional Operating Body”, confirmed Roberto Jiménez, General Regulator of Public Services.

This measure is only temporary. The Regional Operating Body is working on defining another protection option for the National Electric System and the Regional Electric System.