The National Center for Energy Control (CENCE, its initials in Spanish) will have state-of-the-art equipment and a new building by the end of 2017, when it inaugurates its new facilities, the most modern of its kind in Central America.

Its operations – now in the Sabana North section of San José – will move to San Miguel de Santo Domingo de Heredia, a location strategically chosen by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE).

The project is funded mainly by a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and is being built by Volio & Trejos. The total investment amounts to US$59 million, and the facility will house about 200 workers. It is over 40 percent complete.

CENCE will acquire state-of-the-art management and monitoring equipment – known as SCADA – provided by Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), said ICE in a public statement.

The transfer to a new physical plant and the acquisition of equipment are a result of years of planning for growth and diversification of demand and energy generation, as well as to accommodate the transformation and specialization of the country’s economic activities.

Today, high-energy-demand transnational companies choose the country as their center of operations due to the sustainability and reliability of electricity services.

This requires ICE to make the necessary investments to guarantee this reliability for future decades, said Salvador López, director of CENCE.

The center will allow for ICE to accommodate the country’s increasingly diverse energy matrix, and improve the interconnections in the Central American Regional Electricity Market, as well as to project future energy connections with South America, said ICE.

The current installations have been in operation since 1983.