An unusual massive, nationwide power outage crippled the Dominican Republic, leaving vast swathes of the country without electricity for most of the afternoon of Tuesday, 11 November 2025. The blackout obliged millions to turn on their back up power and spend billions on fuel for several hours.
The Minister of Energy Joel Santos said that by 11:30pm of the evening 25 power plants (2,000 megawatts or 62% of the demand) were back supplying power to the National Interconnected Energy System (SENI). At that time, only five: Punta Catalina, Los Minas V and VII, and Cepem I and III were missing to synchronize and return to the national power grid.
The national blackout had been confirmed Tuesday, 11 November 2025 in the afternoon by the president of the Unified Council of Electricity Distribution Companies, Celso Marranzini.
Marranzini assured the public crews were working diligently to correct the systemic failure that triggered the massive interruption.
The Dominican Electric Transmission Company (ETED) explained that the crisis began with a transmission line outage, which rapidly cascaded into a generalized blackout across the entire national electrical grid.
According to ETED, the root cause was the simultaneous shutdown of generating units at the San Pedro de Macorís Electricity Company (CESPM).
This initial failure quickly escalated, impacting the Quisqueya Power Plant and setting off a chain reaction, a “cascading tripping of the system,” that subsequently forced plants like EDAC, AES Andrés, and several other major generation and transmission centers offline.
In response to the crisis, ETED announced it deployed extensive technical teams to various regions to restore service as quickly as possible. The priority focused on stabilizing the national interconnected system to ensure a reliable re-energization process.
The company concluded its statement by issuing an apology to the public for the disruption, calling the incident a “fortuitous situation” (unforeseen accident) within the Dominican electric transmission system, and thanked citizens for their understanding.
The blackout shut down the Santo Domingo Metro. Commuters in the capital faced major disruption Tuesday afternoon as service on the Santo Domingo Metro and Cable Car (Teleférico) remained suspended until around 6pm. The OPRET would offer free Metro and Cable Car services to users boarding following the reopening of the Metro. Diario Libre reports that the Metro service was fully restored by 8:20pm. The Metro usually transports around 17,000 per hour.
The transportation stoppage is a direct consequence of a massive outage in the National Interconnected Electric System (SENI).
Authorities confirmed that the system failure immediately disabled the crucial Paraíso and Isabela substations. These two facilities are responsible for feeding power to both mass transit networks, leaving the systems inoperable until electricity can be restored.
Authorities for the Santo Domingo Metro and Teleférico (Cable Car) announced the suspension of services on Tuesday following the nationwide power outage. The incident reportedly knocked the Paraíso and Isabela substations offline, which are critical power sources for Metro Lines 1 and 2, and Teleférico Line 1.
The Office for the Reordering of Transport (OPRET) confirmed that the disruption occurred at approximately 1:25 pm. The sudden exit of the systems from the National Interconnected Electric System (SENI) caused the immediate and full cessation of operations for both transport systems.
OPRET reported that its Emergency Protocol was immediately activated in response to the outage. As a result, all passengers were safely evacuated from both the Metro and the Teleférico.
The power cut also affected the elevators within the stations. However, officials confirmed that no passengers were trapped in the elevators or elsewhere during the service suspension.
It also caused major chaos in traffic in the capital city, at least.
The good news was that most power plants kicked in, including that at the Las Americas International Airport that announced all was normal at the capital city airport despite the long power outage. Earlier this year, the airport was impacted by a power outage that was not resolved by alternate systems at the time, resulting in a long blackout.
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12 November 2025