Light cuts: 89% of the service has been restored throughout the country

Due to

light cuts

which touched from 7:07 to almost the entire electrical system of

Argentina

and in parts of Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, nearly 50 million people have been left in the dark. While distributors postpone
fault badysis protocol that produced the extraordinary out-of-stock event, the service was restored by 89%.

According to the Secretary of Energy,

Gustavo Lopetegui

, in
press conference with representatives of Cammesa and Transener, at around 3:30 pm, the 56% connection of the service across the country had already been restored.

"During the day, this figure will increase to 100%," said the manager. And he pointed out that "it is abnormal that total disconnection has been caused".

Meanwhile, the national regulator of electricity (
ENRE) indicated on its page, at 4 pm, that 7 037 users of Edenor and 43 125 of Edesur remain without offers in the metropolitan area of

Buenos Aires

(AMBA). At 19:00, the figures indicated that the users concerned were 16,995 in the case of Edenor and 3,067 in the case of Edesur.

The company Edenor, for its part, has just informed via Twitter: "We are restoring the supply of 100% of the customers affected by the failure of the Argentine interconnection system (SADI)".

While Edesur published on the same social network: "Edesur has replaced the service to 100% of customers affected by the failure of the interconnection system, external to the distributor, we have made all the information available to our users" .

According to the report published in the ENRE, the most affected users at the moment are those of

Lanús

and

Lomas de Zamora

while in the north of Buenos Aires they are

Tiger

and

Pilar

.

Where and why the light is cut off

The
The Argentine Electrical Interconnection System (SADI) is divided into generators producing energy, such as Yacyretá or Central Puerto, in transport companies (the largest being Transener) and in distributors, such Edenor and Edesur.

For the energy produced to reach industrial and residential users, it must go through substations, reducing it from 132 kilovolts to 13,000 volts. It is then distributed by medium voltage cables to the power transformers which convert it into a three-phase power supply of 220 or 330 volts.

In this distribution system, several errors can occur. The most common is the failure of a overcurrent fuse. When a line or cable has more demand than it can withstand, a fuse is burned to protect it and prevent the breakage of more expensive and more complicated parts.

Another less common fault, but more difficult and more cumbersome to correct, occurs when a lot of current is flowing at high temperatures over a prolonged period. In these cases, the cables may have faults. The most common occur in their connections and their insulators.

As Lopetegui reports to the media, power cuts are common around the world, but "it is abnormal to disconnect completely from the system." As previously explained, the failure appeared at 7:07 in the coastal transportation system is common, but not the subsequent event chain that automatically disabled the full service.

The Energy Secretary said: "The computers that govern the system detect imbalances that can cause significant damage, disconnected within milliseconds of the system as a whole, without any warning and the human brain can not detect it. "