A massive power cut occurred in a large part of the country from 3:59 p.m., after “various failures in the interconnected system” as a consequence of the fact that a field fire “disturbed a 500 kw high voltage line that connects Campana with General Rodríguez,” official sources reported.
At 19:50, the company Transener declared the “end of risk” due to the massive outage and specified that at 7:04 p.m. the network was normalized throughout the province of Buenos Aires; at 19:30 the service was reestablished in the Central area of the country; at 19:39 Whose was already without cuts; and at 20, the Northwest was normalized.
The provinces of the Litoral and the Northeast were not affected, clarified from the public service concessionaire company for the transport of high-voltage electricity,
In light of the incident, sources from the Ministry of Energy remarked to Télam that “in the face of the imbalance, the system responds immediately, causing the disconnection of generation for its own protection. As a consequence of this interruption, the provinces of Santa Fe, Córdoba, Mendoza, San Juan and the South of the Northwest“, they indicated
The problem began at 3:59 p.m. and shortly after 6:00 p.m. the service began to be restored “in some areas” that were left in the dark, they said, while the risk of fire continued on the affected 500 kw line.
“It is necessary to clarify that the Atucha I nuclear power plant did not have any problem, it is only stopped for security reasons until the system is reconnected and it can deliver the energy it generates again. As the protocol cannot inject its generation for external reasons security indicates that the power plant is shut down”, they explained from that Secretariat.
The company Transener SA reported that today “at 3:59 p.m., the service of 3 High Voltage Lines that link the Transformer Stations of General Rodríguez and the Litoral area occurred, as a result of a field fire “.
“In conditions of high demand, the disturbance generated oscillations in the System, generating the opening of additional links to the previous ones with the consequent restriction in demand,” the company added in a statement.
The company added that together with Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico SA (Cammesa) it launched its Contingency Plan and began work to restore supply in accordance with established procedures.
? The Transener company declared the “end of risk” due to the massive power cut that occurred in a large part of the country, after “several failures in the interconnected system”, as a result of a field fire disturbing a high voltage line pic.twitter.com/FybLJyEq6g
– Telam Agency (@AgenciaTelam) March 1, 2023
transener is a concessionary public service company for the transport of high-voltage electrical energy that operates and directly maintains 85% of the high voltage network and supervises the remaining 15% of the entire Argentine national territory.
The fire “caused the protections of the electrical system to work and the form of protection is to turn off what cannot be sustained”, which affects Santa Fe, Córdoba, Cuyo, South of the Northwest,” the sources added.
And they graphed: “The system was split in half. The northeast area (NEA, Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos and North of Santa Fe from Yacyretá is being regulated, and the southern area, the Comahue Dam, which covers Patagonia, La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro”.
The Ministry of Energy reported that this incident affected “different generation plants, including Atucha I.”
“Failures were recorded in the interconnected system”reported the sources and added as “cause of the above, different generation plants left (the system), including Atucha,” these sources informed Télam.
“There is a frequency failure that expels a part of the generation. This generation center that is Atucha came out as it is said in this jargon of the system. How Atucha came out, for example, Central Puertos also came out,” the sources added.
In turn, the Undersecretary of Energy, Santiago Yanottisaid this Wednesday night to the TN signal that “the high voltage was restored” around 7:30 p.m./8:00 p.m. and that the lack of light that persists tonight in some homes may be due to the fact that “they are working in specific failures of the distribution system”.
In respect of Minister Massa’s complaintYanotti maintained that “the Federal Police is working in the area and Transener is collaborating with the justice system.”
Yanotti stressed that the distribution problems “will continue if there are no investments.”
? Sergio Massa filed a legal complaint to investigate the fire that triggered the blackout https://t.co/KbOyZeic6c
– Telam Agency (@AgenciaTelam) March 1, 2023
He added that the ENRE recently sanctioned the distributor Edesur and now “an investment plan has been presented” so that “there are no more neighborhoods that suffer cyclically as we already know.”
He described the cuts as “a very serious problem” and therefore “the measures to encourage distributors through sanctions.”
from the company Nuclear Power Argentinain charge of the operation of the three nuclear power plants in the country, Atucha I, Atucha II and Embalse, told this agency that “25,000 Mw were being generated and 10,000 Mw fell, it is a network problem.”
In Mendoza, the Mendoza Provincial Regulatory Entity reported that the service was affected in the province.
In San Luis, power outages were also reported in different parts of the province. Edesal, the company in charge of the province’s electricity supply, reported that “there is no voltage record at the national level” and called to “take precautions” and disconnect all electrical devices.
From Catamarca, the company Energía Catamarca SAPEM, informed that the cut is due to the fact that TRANSNOA SA lines are out of service. From the company they indicated that they requested information on the causes of the service cut.
Santa Cruz was also affected in its entirety while the blackout also impacted the entire province of Santiago del Estero.
The massive blackout affected different parts of Salta Capital and Tartagal, according to the Salta Electricity Distribution Company (Edesa). The company reported through social networks that some distributors went out of service.
The city of Bahía Blanca, in the south of Buenos Aires, registered problems this Wednesday afternoon with the supply in the electrical energy network from the National Interconnected System. The Southern Distributor Energy Company (EDES) indicated that it has already begun “to gradually restore the service,” the company added in a statement.
In the city of Buenos Aires, the Miter, Sarmiento, Belgrano Sur and San Martín railways operated with delays and cancellations due to blackouts, while there are similar problems on the various subway lines.
The Buenos Aires Ministry of Health informed Télam that the massive blackout affected most of the hospitals located in the southern area of the City of Buenos Aires. However, its Guards, critical areas and operating rooms are operating normally through the supply of generator sets, while the only hospital that required the use of its own electric generator was Santojanni. .
More than 100 intersections with traffic lights stopped working, there were passengers evacuated in the subways and, at the worst moment, the Firefighters worked to rescue people trapped in 18 elevators, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires reported in a statement.
Airport sources, for their part, confirmed to Télam that there were microcuts at the Buenos Aires Aeroparque and at the Ezeiza station that did not interrupt services.
On Twitter, the testimonials and claims were accumulated with the hashtags SinLuz, Atucha and Apagón.
June 16, 2019: the day the “blackout of the century” occurred
At 7:06 a.m. on the third Sunday of June 2019, coinciding with the celebration of Father’s Day, a succession of failures produced in just 30 seconds caused the largest blackout in the country’s history, called by specialists the “blackout of the century.” “, whose recomposition took 14 hours.
Based on the subsequent investigation, the blackout was caused by an operational error by Transener, when it took the Colonia Elía-Campana high-voltage line out of service to repair tower 412, which was being eroded by the Paraná Guazú river.
The company made a bypass with another line for these tasks, thus modifying the network architecture, but omitted to reflect these changes in the configuration of the Automatic Generation Disconnection (DAG) system, causing, after a short circuit, the loss of synchronism of the power stations, imbalances and low frequency in the interconnected system.
This Wednesday the extensive cut in electricity service that covered an important part of the country was due to a rural fire that affected the laying of a high-voltage network between the Buenos Aires districts of Campana and General Rodríguez.
The dimension of the cut registered in 2019 earned it the title of “blackout of the century” among specialists, because it was so extensive that it transcended Argentine territory and extended to sectors of Brazil and Uruguay, and because 50 million people were affected, more than the population of the country.
Almost two years after that blackout, in May 2021, the National Electricity Regulatory Entity (ENRE) concluded that “the negligent action” of the electric carrier Transener was responsible for the massive blackout that affected the Argentine Interconnection System.
In this way, the intervention of the regulatory body -with the support of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires- decided to sanction the company Transener due to “the unavailability of its equipment” at the time of the blackout, and advanced with the sanctioning process. to 300 distribution agents and large users of the Electricity Market.
Technically, it was explained that due to a cable failure in the area of the Campana district of Buenos Aires, the Automatic Generation Disconnection (DAG) did not work as it should have done, which would have circumscribed the damage and prevented the entire system from failing.
On the contrary, in the case of this Wednesday -as reported by the Transener company- “at 3:59 p.m., 3 High Voltage Lines went out of service that link the Transformer Stations of General Rodríguez and with the area of Littoral, as a consequence of a field fire”.
The fire “generated oscillations in the System” but this time it caused “the protections of the electrical system to work” and the way to protect it is to take out of operation what cannot be sustained in the network.
Transener is a public high-voltage electricity transportation concessionaire company that directly operates and maintains 85% of the high-voltage network and supervises the remaining 15% of the entire Argentine national territory.
