Caterpillar and SoEnergy Successfully Commission Bridge Power Plant, Stabilizing Grid Within Weeks

For Worldwide Release: September 2025

Supporting the national electricity grid of a Central American country, who saw their hydroelectric reservoirs drop to historic lows due to extreme weather events, the energy solution combined Caterpillar high efficiency equipment and its industry-leading distributed energy resource management system (DERMS), Cat^® AMP, to deliver increased power generation capacity.

The Cat AMP system is designed to bring distributed energy resources (DERs), from gas and diesel gensets to solar panels or battery storage, into optimized use on any grid system.  Cat AMP is already helping thousands of customers optimize their energy consumption.

The Need for Additional Capacity

After rising concerns about the strain placed on its national electricity grid, the country took a proactive stance to avoid potential brownouts or worse and announced an emergency bid to increase its power generation capacity.

The solution consists of a bank of 31 containerized gensets, providing a total output of 35MW and acting as a discrete, additional power plant for the utility. Those gensets comprise 23 Caterpillar PM1360 Industrial power modules alongside eight XQC1600 units, powered by the Cat 3512 and 3516C engines respectively.  Cat AMP then enables the plant users to intelligently monitor asset health and view performance parameters and remote dispatch equipment, allowing them to make timely decisions and operate efficiently.

“This modular power plant is an all-in power solution to the Utility, where everything from the installation and monitoring, up to the operation of the plant, is provided for them,” explains Tom Caldwell, vice president of Caterpillar’s energy systems division.

“Cat AMP will help SoEnergy in numerous ways, all the way from asset conditions, status and performance to operational dispatch.  It’s a complete turnkey solution. To the grid, the 31 gensets appear just like any other conventional power plant, albeit one that could be delivered, built and commissioned – remotely – within a ten-week period.”

As Tom points out, commissioning was a relatively simple process, thanks to Cat AMP’s ability to connect to any standard SCADA system and the flexibility of the site’s modular design. From here, CAT AMP can pull together all the data it needs to interpret grid status and energy consumption, which it compiles into reports and adds the essential control ability.

“The country is determined to build resilience into its grid and bring stability to its electrical distribution system,” says András Mesics, chief executive officer of SoEnergy. “Tourism is one of its leading industries, and other major elements of the industrial economy rely heavily on electricity as an energy source. This solution has quickly been able to bring that much-needed peace of mind and secure additional capacity to ensure the lights stay on.’