Nearly 20 million people were left without power in Argentina due to a major blackout

Several breakdowns of the Argentine electrical system caused a major power outage on Wednesday that affected several regions of the country, including Buenos Aires.

According to sources from Energy Secretary“several failures have been recorded in the interconnected system” and, “due to the above, different production plants have gone out”, including the Atucha 1 nuclear power plant and the Central Puerto thermal generator.

“Work is underway to resolve this issue,” they said from the Department of Energy.

The outage caused 10,000 megawatts of the 25,000 being generated at the time to be taken out of service, one of the sources said.

The blackout occurs at times of high temperatures in the austral summerwhich comes on top of a historic drought that led the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange to cut its soybean and corn crop forecasts last week to 33.5 million and 41 million tonnes, respectively.

According to data from the Wholesale Electricity Market Administration Company (Cammesa), demand for electricity collapsed from 4 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) in almost the whole country, although with an unequal impact.

For its part, the high-voltage electricity transmission company Transener reported the decommissioning of three high-voltage lines that connect the transformer stations of the city of General Rodríguez in Buenos Aires with the Litoral region (north- is) following a fire in a field.

Transener said that together with Cammesa, it has implemented a contingency plan and started working to restore supply.

Due to the blackout, disruptions were reported in commuter rail services in Buenos Aires and in the capital’s metro.

Several districts of the capital were deprived of electricity, which caused the interruption of the service of the main metro lines and suburban trains. Several areas in the provinces of Córdoba, Mendoza, San Luis, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe were also left in darkness.

Santiago Yanottiundersecretary of electrical energy, told the Todo Noticias channel that they expected “in a few hours the service will be restored”.

The official said the causes of the fire are unknown, but he suspects it was intentional.

At 7:06 a.m. on Sunday, June 16, 2019, Father’s Day, a succession of failures produced in just 30 seconds caused the greatest Blackout of Argentine history. Scholars considered it the “Blackout of the Century” because it was so extensive that it transcended Argentine territory and spread to parts of Brazil and Uruguay, and because 50 million people were affected, more than the country’s population.

The process of restoring service began two hours later from the strongest points of the system: the hydroelectric plants of Yacyretá, Chocón and Salto Grande.

Despite the fact that at the beginning of that day there was speculation of an alleged sabotage, the government of Mauricio Macri at the time clarified: “The cut occurred automatically (without human intervention) due to a failure of the Yacyretá transportation system”.

With information from EFE and Reuters

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