Itabo power company denies outage caused blackout

Santo Domingo.- The power company Itabo on Monday said a substation outage at its power plant Itabo Gas shouldn’t be the cause of Saturday night’s night nationwide blackout, and noted that all maintenance is conducted according to schedule.

"An undesirable event such as insulators failures should not lead to a total collapse of the SENI (national grid), if the coordination of protection- by the power plants, power lines, and the distributors’ load shedding functions properly – the same should automatically isolate faults and maintain the stability of the SENI," the company said in an emailed statement.

“Itabo suggests waiting for the outcome of the Failure Analysis investigation committee coordinated by the Coordinating Body to identify all the causes of the unfortunate event occurred last Saturday,” it said, adding that all the agencies involved need to seek a solution together to prevent recurrence, “since the information and investigation thus far are preliminary.”

"Substations may suffer failures before or during maintenance without causing major disturbances at SENI because the transmission system must have all the shunt protection and appropriate adjustments whose responsibility is of other agencies,” Itabo said.