The Dominican Republic has begun to put capabilities, technologies and deadlines into the next phase of its electrical expansion.
Joel Santos Echavarría , Minister of Energy and Mines, confirmed during the 11th Energy Week: “We have several auctions underway. We're primarily going to hold one for 200 MW of existing renewable energy to add batteries, that is, purely battery-based.”
During the opening of the meeting, the official had placed storage at the center of the Dominican plan and set a goal of at least 800 MW by 2028 .
Then, in dialogue with Energía Estratégica , he finished opening the contracting map planned to achieve that objective.
“We are also going to add an auction of between 600 and 900 MW of renewable energy, also with 50% storage. That is new energy,” he noted.
“The strategy will be to complete them between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. The existing generation plant will possibly be a little further along in 2027,” he added.
The strategy wouldn't end there. The government was also preparing a call for bids for at least 900 MW of existing generation capacity and a fourth process aimed at contracting new firm power to cover the system's needs for the next decade.
“The idea is also a fourth tender, which would be to tender the country's firm power generation for 2030-2032,” he stressed.
From the BESS goal to the calendar: the first calls between the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027
The precise timing ultimately transformed the energy roadmap into a concrete signal for developers, power generators, and investors. And the sequence aimed to address a system that had changed scale in just a few years.
According to data presented by the minister himself during the inauguration, the Dominican Republic's installed capacity had increased from 4,921 MW in 2020 to around 7,120 MW in 2025 , an increase of nearly 45% . Within this transformation, solar and wind power had grown from 555 MW in 2020 to over 2,000 MW , while renewable sources already accounted for approximately 26% of the energy injected into the grid .
The official projection raised that volume to around 2,800 MW of renewables by 2028. “This process doesn't stop with the progress already achieved. Our focus is on the future,” Santos affirmed during his speech at the opening of the event.
The technological leap emerged precisely there. The accelerated incorporation of variable generation had forced a change in the way the National Interconnected Electric System operated and a search for capacity capable of shifting energy between different times of day.
“We have entered a new stage: the era of energy storage. The country is making progress in incorporating battery systems and projects having at least 800 MW of storage by 2028,” he stated.
The objective was backed by an economic and operational problem that had already ceased to be marginal.
During the first months of 2026, renewable curtailment hovered around 14% , with some days seeing cuts approach 40%, and March being one of the periods of greatest curtailment. The combination of congestion, transmission limits, solar surpluses, and technical constraints on conventional generation had increased the pressure on projects.
Storage thus appeared not only as a frequency backup, but as a tool to recover energy that the system could not absorb during certain hours and transfer it to peak demand.
In this regard, Santos acknowledged: “Although I must say that in the last 30 days curtailment has been reduced considerably with some measures we have been able to take in the administration of the system, there is no doubt that storage is the most effective response to that issue.”
Continue reading
A BESS career that had already begun before the new auctions
The package announced by the Ministry entered a market where energy storage had already begun to gain scale. The Dominican Electricity Transmission Company (ETED) was moving forward with a BESS initiative of up to 600 MW / 1200 MWh through private investment, for which 39 companies had been authorized to proceed to the next stages.
The program sought to add capacity for frequency regulation, fast response, ramp control, congestion relief and contingency backup, while storage was also beginning to find specific remuneration mechanisms within the Dominican electricity market.
Based on this, the new calls for proposals expanded the technology's reach. The existing 200 MW of batteries for renewables would bring flexibility to assets already operating in the system, while the 600 to 900 MW block of new clean capacity with 50% storage would incorporate BESS from the project design stage.
The difference was significant for developers and investors: in the next plants, the battery would no longer necessarily appear as a later expansion, but as part of the very configuration required to compete for new capacity.
“Integrating energy storage will obviously allow us to store energy that we are already generating during the daytime for use during peak hours. All of this will allow for more energy to be available precisely where energy demand is growing the most in the Dominican Republic,” Santos noted.
The move also coincided with a renewable energy penetration that had already changed the operational needs of the National Interconnected System (SENI). With more concentrated solar power generation during daylight hours, the challenge was no longer just about adding megawatts (MW) but also about incorporating tools capable of distributing that energy over time and reducing the system's exposure to curtailment and grid constraints.
Renewables and batteries weren't enough: The Dominican Republic was preparing capacity for the 1930s
The strategy also did not rely solely on renewables and storage. The Dominican Republic sought to proactively contract the firm capacity needed to sustain demand growth over the next decade and prevent variable capacity growth from leaving the system's backup capacity unmet.
At the opening of the 11th Energy Week, Santos mentioned among the projects underway Manzanillo, with more than 1200 MW , as well as Generadora San Felipe , in addition to other developments distributed throughout the country.
“We feel a responsibility to leave energy capacity in place for the so-called 2030s,” he stated.
That horizon finally took shape during the press round, when he confirmed to this portal a fourth tender specifically for firm generation for 2030-2032 , in addition to the processes for batteries, new renewables and existing generation.
The Government linked this anticipation to an economy in which free trade zones, tourism, agribusiness, mining and new digital consumption were putting increasing pressure on electricity demand.
“It’s no longer just a complement. The energy system must keep pace with economic growth,” the minister stated.
The plan thus combined three different needs within a single expansion: energy, flexibility, and reliability . The new renewable generation would expand the supply of clean electricity; storage would allow surplus energy to be shifted to peak consumption hours; and dispatchable power would cover periods when solar and wind resources were unavailable.
The hydroelectric plant completed that plan. With an installed capacity of nearly 600 MW , the authorities were working on upgrading existing plants to add about 100 MW , reducing sedimentation in the dams, and evaluating pumped storage projects.
“We are already evaluating what would be hydropumping projects, that is, increasing the generation capacity of the country's main dams based on what, in simple terms, would be storing energy through hydropumping,” Santos confirmed.
With 2800 MW of renewables projected for 2028 , at least 800 MW of storage , an existing generation tender of no less than 900 MW and another aimed at ensuring firm power towards 2030-2032 , the country began to simultaneously plan the expansion and the mechanisms necessary to operate it.
That challenge also permeated the agenda of the 11th Energy Week , which brought together representatives from 27 countries in Santo Domingo to discuss integration, energy security, storage, investment, financing, resilience and infrastructure.
“The energy transition is not measured solely by the capacity that is installed, but by the ability to convert that energy into development, confidence, productivity and the well-being of the people,” Santos concluded.