In Central America the national and regional electrical systems face several risks regarding hurricanes, strong winds and rains and its negative impacts. Besides the need to mitigate these risks and increase the security of supply, there are other challenges including an aging infrastructure, electrical losses, continued growth in demand, the integration of increasing numbers of variable renewable energy (vRE) sources as well as the expected advent of electro-mobility in the forthcoming years. Yet, how ready is Central America to tackle these challenges?

The region is exposed to an increase of extreme climate and weather events. The power system, as critical infrastructure, needs to withstand the impact of such climate events and recover rapidly afterwards.

In November 2020, hurricanes Eta and Iota hit the region and the power system hard. In Honduras, control discharges had to be made in the main hydro power plant, customers were disconnected in the affected areas, a major substation was flooded and there were damages to transmission structures; a year later, part of the infrastructure is still being repaired.

In the context of Green Recovery, the GET.transform project teamed up with GIZ’s regional program, “Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency (4E) in Central America” and contracted Energynautics to conduct a detailed analysis about the impacts of climate change on the power system in Honduras. The research will focus on analyzing the climate trends of the region and their potential impact on the power system. Also, a benchmark for natural disaster readiness will be created and applied to the case study of Honduras. Finally, the collaboration aims to support the Secretaría de Energía of Honduras in creating a roadmap to improve the resilience of its power system regarding new technical solutions (and supporting regulatory frameworks), which should serve as a guideline for other countries in the region.

Find more information here: Promoting A Regional Energy Market in Central America (giz.de).