By : Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, May 20, 2022
Last month the tender to install 400 new megawatts (400MW) to the national electricity system concluded. The process was launched on December 1, 2021.
Said tender was declared urgent in order to ensure that before October of this year energy is injected into the system of medium-sized generating units and, also, modular plants already enabled for rapid installation on land, which would add up to 400 megawatts.
As a result of this tender, the new generating units will begin to be installed and produce gradually from next June, and they have the end date to reach maximum production next October.
The urgency is due to the fact that the generation park received in August 2020 was clearly in deficit, since if the maximum energy demand was supplied, the remaining reserve was less than 5%, that is, a capacity so scarce that any output by repair or maintenance of a plant in the summer period would undoubtedly result in blackouts due to a lack of available installed capacity. This situation is a clear threat to the well-being of the population and to the recovery and growth of the economy.
This situation had been pointed out in 2018 by a study commissioned by the CDEEE itself to the Argentine firm Mercados Energéticos, in which the need to install a 600 MW power plant based on natural gas in 2021 and another also based on natural gas was demonstrated. 600 MW in 2023. In addition, the study indicated that the country should annually install 300 MW of renewable energy divided into 150 MW solar and 150 MW wind, these details were offered by the Minister of Energy and Mines, Antonio Almonte.
The lack of generation reserve in previous years has been the effective cause of the recent blackouts caused by the departure of the generator AES Andrés, for repair purposes, and of Punta Catalina 1 for maintenance.
President Luis Abinader, a few months after coming to power, ordered the LPI-EDES-01-2021 tender, launched in February 2021 to build two plants of 400 MW each and a terminal for offloading and storing natural gas on the coast. from Manzanillo, Monte Cristi. The end of the tender will take place at the end of next June with the awarding of the winning bids.
In addition, in January of this year another mid-term tender was launched, also for 800 MW (LPI-EDES-003-2022), whose end and award is scheduled for before September 2022.
In short, this government is doing something historic in terms of electricity generation in the country, which is to provide the nation with nearly 2,000 new megawatts of power, some of which will be installed in 2022, and the rest before the end of 2025 and 2026.
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