The Undersecretary of Electric Power, Santiago Yanotti, stated that the country could “have a more solid system” in terms of electricity, but warned about the problems generated by the lack of investment that slowed down “the expansion of the transportation system” that “was paralyzed as of 2015, 2016, and only resumed when we managed to get out of the pandemic, in 2021 “.
“This decision not to invest in infrastructure ends up costing the country dearly, not only because of this failure (in reference to the cut in service on Wednesday, March 1), but because there comes a time when no more can be injected or consumed energy,” Yanotti said.
The high voltage service normalized within three hours, but there are still specific cases of users who continued this Friday without electricity
In this regard, he maintained that “it is not true” what “sometimes say” regarding the fact that “Argentina consumes a lot of energy”, since, “in terms of GDP per capita, we consume half of the developed countries”.
“We could have a more solid system,” he said in statements to El Destape Radio, in which he stated that, “Unfortunately, some people resent it being said, but the expansion of the transportation system has been halted since 2015, 2016 and it was resumed only when we managed to get out of the pandemic in 2021, when the works that had been paralyzed began to be finished, some with 85%, 90% progress.
Among the examples of these works, he pointed out one “very important for the metropolitan area called AMBA I, which requires an investment of approximately 1,000 million dollars” and would strengthen the transmission system.
Yanotti explained that “in a ringed system, when one line fails, another is available, but since in this case we do not have that other line, if one fails, it causes these imbalances.”
On March 1, there was a massive power outage in a large part of the country starting at 3:59 p.m.after “several failures in the interconnected system” as a result of a field fire “disturbing a 500 kw high voltage line that connects Campana with General Rodríguez,” official sources reported.
The high voltage service was normalized within three hours, but there are still specific cases of users who continued this Friday without electricity supply, although due to inconveniences related to distribution and not to transportation.
