Minister Santos Echavarría says 30 electricity generation projects are being developed to meet growing demand

The following is a machine translation of a Ministry of Energy and Mines release

SANTO DOMINGO. – The Minister of Energy and Mines (MEM), Joel Santos Echavarría, reported that 30 electricity generation projects are currently being developed that will inject 3,200 megawatts into the networks to cover, in this four-year period, the energy demand registered by the country, due to the economic growth of the Dominican Republic and the high temperatures prevailing in the country.

Santos Echavarría spoke during the panel “Electric Generation and Transmission”, organized by the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo (Intec) and the Dominican Association of the Electric Industry (ADIE), in which he detailed that, of these projects, 2,200 megawatts are from thermal energy and another 1,000 megawatts from renewable sources, which will enter the system in the current administration.

He said that the injection of clean sources into the networks, in addition to diversifying the energy matrix, helps the country to decarbonize the economy with environmentally friendly energy.

The minister indicated that electricity demand increased by 6.8% in 2023 and is growing at a rate of 8.3% in 2024, so the Government continues to support new generation projects to meet the growing demand that will be registered in the coming years.

"We have a monitoring committee for these projects to ensure that they are operational as soon as possible. Our goal is to have a supply greater than demand, and we are working towards that goal," said Santos Echavarría.

The panel included Jaime Aristy Escuder, former administrator of Punta Catalina; Rubén Jiménez Bichara, former administrator of the CDEEE; Roberto Herrera, president of ADIE, and Edy Jiménez, commercial vice president of AES Dominicana. It was moderated by Roberto Cavada, and Shajira Nazir, dean of Economics and Business at Intec.

Regarding the electricity transmission networks, the minister said that the Government plans to invest US$450 million in the coming years in this subsector so that the infrastructure has the capacity to transport the energy that the population demands.

He said that the tax reform will include RD$18 billion annually in the electrical sector, which will help in working on all the electrical networks, transformers, meters and substations that are required to improve the distribution networks in the Dominican Republic.

In this regard, Santos Echavarría emphasized that investments must continue to be diversified territorially to protect them from possible natural phenomena, and thus strengthen energy security.

He said that the electrical projects being developed in the north of the country are part of energy security, as they seek to diversify production that is currently concentrated in some provinces of the country, and that this vision of the Government has as its fundamental objective to guarantee the supply of electrical generation.