2019 Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay blackout
On 16 June 2019, a large-scale power outage struck most of Argentina, all of Uruguay, and parts of Paraguay, leaving an estimated total of 48 million people without electrical supply.
Blackout at the Obelisco de Buenos Aires | |
| Date | 16 June 2019 |
|---|---|
| Location | Argentina (except Tierra del Fuego), Uruguay and parts of Paraguay |
| Type | Blackout |
| Cause | Operative error |
By the following day it was confirmed that power had been restored to most of Argentina and Uruguay, and Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised a full investigation.
The blackout is believed to have been caused by an operational misbehavior from Transener, a transmission lines operator in Argentina. A 500 kV line running from Colonia Elía to Campana, crossing the Paraná Guazú river, was down on undergoing maintenance to repair the tower number 412, whose base had been suffering from erosion by the river. The company made a bypass for this tasks, using a nearby overhead line, but missed to reflect that network grid change in the Automatic Generation Shutdown system (in spanish: DAG), which is designed to alert energy generators of network changes that would require a lower of energy generation. This caused, after a short circuit which lowered demand, an excess of power generation in the grid, a lack of synchronization of power plants, loss of balance, and a low frequency in the network.
In about 30 seconds, a succession of automatic disconnections from the grid caused a blackout that came to affect 50 million users in the continent.