The director of the Office for Transport Reorganization (Opret), Rafael Santosexplained why Santo Domingo Metro did not immediately activate its electricity generation system during the blackout that affected the service on Tuesday, and directly clarified the statement of former president Leonel Fernández, who assured on social networks that the institution has “40 megawatts” of backup that could have been turned on immediately.
“That is technically poorly expressed“Said Santos when responding to the former president’s publication. “There are not three units or 40 megawatts. Is single unit emergency composed of 18 floors of 2.2 megawatts each,” he pointed out.
Why didn’t the emergency system?
Santos explained that the Metro did not immediately activate this backup drive because the plants were in “deep maintenance” fair when the electrical interruption occurred.
As detailed, the institution had taken advantage of the decrease in cyclonic activity to intervene the systemincluding the replacement of 10,000 gallons of fuel that had been stored for 11 years and had been damaged.
Battery change of all emergency plants.
“The situation surprised us by giving deep maintenance“Said Santos on the Hoy Mismo program. “The response was slower because we had to turn on plant by plant with the available battery.”
The Metro systems also they turned off completely
Although the commercial energy returned in around an hour and a halfthe official explained that the Metro systems they were already offlineso they required another similar period to fully restart.
“For that reason we were able start up around the 8:00 at nightand we ended up regularizing the service until midnight,” he said.
He Metro operates usually today
Santos assured that this Thursday the system works normally: 25 trains in the Line 2 and 21 trains —seven of them double— on Line 1.
“Today it is everything normal“he reiterated.
