Planta Geotérmica San Jacinto Tizate or San Jacinto Tizate Geothermal Power Plant is a geothermal power plant in Nicaragua.
It has a nameplate capacity of 72 Megawatts electric power. The plant was upgraded from 10 Megawatts of capacity by Polaris Energy Nicaragua S.A. who continue to run the plant as of 2020.[1] As of 2020 it is one of two geothermal power plants in the country, the other being a 78 Megawatt station near Momotombo.[2] Sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire and nicknaming itself "país de lagos y volcanes", Nicaragua has a large geothermal energy potential but in 2020 only 153.24 MW of the nominal installed capacity of 1619.73 MW were geothermal (a bit under 9.5%)[3] in terms of net capacity, the figure is 93.21 MW out of 1,329.42 MW or just over 7%.
However, due to the high capacity factor and the ability to provide baseload power, geothermal power provided 17.13% of net electricity generation in 2019.[4] In absolute figures, geothermal power provided 703.10 Gigawatt-hours in 2019 compared to an overall electricity production of 4105.48 Gigawatt-hours.
In 2021 the CEO of Polaris Infrastructure, the owners of the plant, announced a further expansion of the plant by an additional binary cycle plant with an electric capacity of 7-10 Megawatts electrical power.[5] [6]
The opposition aligned newspaper La Prensa has criticized the Daniel Ortega government's decision to invest in geothermal energy on cost grounds.[7] [8]