“I came home after a long, hot day at work. I thought I was going to rest when I arrived at my residence in the Buena Vista Primera sector of Villa Mella, but it was not like that. There was no light and the blackout lasted all night”, narrates the young Lorenzo Cuevas about his experience the day before yesterday. “I don’t remember exactly what time he arrived, but it was around 4 in the morning. It was a terrible night, because I don’t have an inverter and it was very hot”.
His experience is not unrelated to other residents who are experiencing power outages in different locations, and although the authorities have assured that they would stabilize with the entry of plants, the announcements do not reassure.
“This situation is becoming recurrent, something that did not happen before. I remember that three years ago, when I moved to the sector, one of the points I took into account was that in this area there were very rarely blackouts”, says Cuevas.
Although the executive vice president of the electricity distribution companies, Andrés Astacio, stated on Tuesday that between that day and yesterday the system should have been stabilized, users of the electricity service in several municipalities in the northern region of the country protested that night by burning tires due to the prolonged and continuous blackouts that have been registered.
Among the towns where protests were staged are Moca, Montecristi, Salcedo and Santiago, where they denounced power cuts that exceed eight hours.
The protesters said that the interruptions of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (Edenorte) are intensified at night and in the early morning. The entity has more than 1 million customers.
“With the high temperatures that are being recorded, I had to wait until 2 in the morning to go to bed when the light came,” said Luis Rosario, who lives in the RVIII residential complex in the Las Dianas sector, east of Santiago.
products are damaged
Merchants in Santiago complain that their products are being damaged by the lack of electricity. They say they have lost large investments in sausages and other items that require refrigeration. The collapse of the electricity service has been registered in the last two weeks in towns of Cibao, and street protests have been a way to complain.
On his Twitter account, Edenorte reported on Tuesday that for a few days, several generators have ceased their activities for maintenance, therefore some circuits alternate with power interruptions.
Yesterday, it also reported that the Dominican Electric Transmission Company was carrying out preventive maintenance on the 69KV La Vega-Bonao transmission line, from 12 noon to 6 in the afternoon, which affected the service at the Rincón substations. , Fantino, Bonao PER and Bonao Pueblo, in the province of Monseñor Nouel.
While the Electricity Distribution Company of the South (Edesur) -with more than 700,000 customers- reported yesterday that, due to the generation deficit in some generating plants that provide energy to the electrical networks, the generation deficit was about 800 MW, due to the departure of the Haina Gas, Itabo II , Los Mina V, Los Mina VII and Unit 1 of the Thermoelectric Power Plant Catalina Point.
The Coordinating Body of the National Interconnected Electric System reported that Haina was unavailable due to corrective maintenance, the Los Mina Energy Park unavailable due to scheduled maintenance, and Unit 1 of Catalina Point remains out of service until the end of the month for corrective maintenance.
For last Tuesday, of the total energy not supplied, 69.90% was due to a generation deficit, 29.04% due to an internal distribution cause and 1.06% due to transmission.
