Análisis del costo de la energía eléctrica en Panamá frente al precio del petróleo

Abstract

The oil cost in the international market has a direct impact on the cost of electricity.  In Panama, there are mechanisms to compensate for these variations through the fuel variation correction factor (CVC). This mechanism allows the retail electricity rate to be adjusted following variations in oil. In the period from 2015 to 2019, oil fluctuated greatly, reaching over 75 USD per barrel and falling below 30 USD per barrel.  These fluctuations affected energy costs in Panama, although not precisely in the way that was expected according to the conditions established for the electricity market.  To study this phenomenon, a database has been built with the coefficients of the electricity rate and a software tool has been developed that allows calculations of the bill for energy consumption in the period from 2015 to 2019, for customers of the low voltage group without demand (BTS).  With the information collected, it was determined that there is a moderate correlation between the cost of oil in the international market and the bill for electricity consumption in Panama of 0.7 and 0.66 for customers with consumption of 500 kWh (BTS2) and 1000 kWh (BTS3) respectively, when the CVC is used, and 0.366 and 0.365 when not used.  Likewise, it is found that for every 100 kWh consumed, the bill increases (or decreases) by 7.25 hundredths for each USD increase (or decrease) in the price of a barrel of oil.