Energy, Regulation & Policy Oct 6, 2021 4:16 PM
The Ministry of Mines and Energy (MinEnergia) announced budget to expand energy service in currently illegally-connected neighborhoods in different regions of the country.
The entity said that more than 31,000 families will be able to access efficient, reliable and safe energy service, through an investment of CoP$119B, La Republica reported.
The goal is to legalize electricity networks in illegally-connected neighborhoods in five departments.
In total, 75 projects will be developed in Magdalena (17,269 families), Meta (7,054 families), Atlántico (3,731 families), Arauca (2,324 families) and La Guajira (669 families).
The resources allocated for the development of 75 projects will enable the installation of approximately 1,000 new transformers, 9,300 poles and 300 kilometers of medium and low voltage networks to regularize users and improve energy services in 20 municipalities in the country.
The Vice Minister of Energy, Miguel Lotero, said that these projects will allow families to have a regulated and safe service.
“This will prevent them from putting their lives at risk thanks to the installation of networks that meet the appropriate conditions. In this way, families will have access to this important service with reliable and quality energy,” Lotero said.
MinEnergia said that this project will help commercialization companies make the necessary investments to further improve service quality.
The Network Operators of the beneficiary departments will be in charge of managing the resources approved by the Management Committee of the Electricity Network Standardization Program (Prone) and will provide, free of charge, the auditing services required for each project.
Bottom-Line: Starting to legalize these neighborhoods will be important to improve the quality of service, but this process could generate disagreements among some inhabitants of these regions.
It is important to approach the communities and explain the benefits of this change.
