DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

A synchronisation fault at a key coal-fired plant led to a nationwide outage after frequency plunged to 56 Hz, exposing once again the operational fragility of the country’s isolated power system, Strategic Energy website reports in its analysis of the Monday 23 February national blackout.

The Dominican Republic’s National Interconnected Electricity System (SENI) collapsed on that Monday morning after the abrupt loss of generation at strategic thermal power plants. According to official records from the grid operator, system frequency fell to 56 Hz following a sharp drop in power injected into the grid, resulting in a nationwide blackout.

Preliminary reports linked the event to a failure in the synchronisation system at the Punta Catalina power station, one of the country’s largest coal-fired plants. Technical sources confirmed that the plant’s synchronisation equipment...