Over the weekend the entire territory of the Dominican Republic suffered a series of three major blackouts. Saturday’s papers talked about the second blackout in two days and headlines in Sunday’ papers reported the third massive blackout. At 10:45 Saturday morning, the system collapsed for the third time as mechanics were working on one of the generators at the Itabo generation facility.
According to Francisco Mendez, the Superintendent of Electricity, Saturday’s failure was caused by serious flaws in the supervision of transmission lines and financial limitations that prevent improvement on the high-tension lines. As reported in El Caribe, Mendez attributed the third major blackout to “a problem with the Itabo generator, which was undergoing repairs, resulting in a rolling blackout of the entire system. On Friday there was a short circuit in these lines. What is happening, is that the supervisory mechanisms are failing to do their jobs, and are (we) are lacking investment (in the lines) and the electricity distributors do not have the resources.” Supervision of the transmission lines is the responsibility of ETE, the Electrical Transmission Company, part of the CDEEE. While Mendez did not give precise figures of the investment needed to repair the transmission lines and the supervision thereof, sources within the sector have told El Caribe that they need US$600 million. Opinions, however, appear to differ as to the causes of the blackouts. While Mendez said that there were 1,400 megawatts on line at the time of the blackout, Jose Luis Moreno, a consultant for the CDEEE, told El Caribe that there were less than 1,000 mw on line at the time. Moreno called Mendez’ statement a “technical lie”, adding that “they are trying to hide the fact that the generation system does not regulate, while the ORSI, the Regulating Organization of the Interconnected System, ignores the situation.” Moreno contended, “There are daily partial blackouts due to the low generation, the system’s vulnerability and the financial pressure from the generators.”
On Monday, nevertheless, at least in several areas of Santo Domingo, the service seemed to have improved.