El Salvador - Energy and power



El Salvador has no exploitable fossil fuels. Electric power production is controlled by the government's autonomous agency, the Executive Hydroelectric Commission of Río Lempa (CEL), created in 1945 to plan and develop the country's electric power facilities. The total installed power capacity rose from 171,000 kW in 1965 to 1,118,000 kW in 2001. Production increased from 582 million kWh in 1965 to 3.7 billion kWh in 2000. Of that total, hydroelectric sources supplied 35.5%; fossil fuels contributed 42.3%; and the remainder was supplied by geothermal resources that tap volcanically produced underground steam for power. In that year about 800 million kWh of electricity from geothermal sources was produced in El Salvador, which is the largest consumer of geothermal energy in Central America. CEL's first geothermal facility, the 95 MW geothermal plant at Ahuachapán, was opened at the end of 1975 at a cost of $25 million. The country's other major geothermal plant is the Berlin plant in the province of Usulutan. In 2000 consumption of electricity was 4.1 billion kWh.

Also read article about El Salvador from Wikipedia

User Contributions:

I loved this article. I have a big country report due on the 22'nd of April. It helped me a lot and I don't know what I would do without it. THANKYOU!!!

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: