The secret history of a power outage that will remain in the story

Sunday's power outage will remain in history as the most striking in the Southern Cone for reaching not only Argentina, but partially four other nations.

At 7:06 am on Father's Day, the production system was operating with its thermal power plants at a technical minimum, with the three fully loaded nuclear power plants and with the Comahue Dam almost shut down for storing water.

Yacyretá, on the other hand, experienced its maximum rainfall due to rains in Brazil. The energy then circulated only through one of the two high voltage lines in 500 kilovolts (kV). Why a?

Cammesa itself reported that the interconnected system has been operating since April 18 with a 500-kilovolt (kV) branch from the spawn between Colonia Elía (Entre Ríos) and the Transformation Station (ET) at Nueva Campana (Buenos Aires). It is out of service because of the relocation of a tower to the crossing of the Paraná Guazú River.

This line, duplicated, is one of those that carry energy from the factories of Yacyretá and Salto Grande to Buenos Aires, the market where demand is the strongest. But he is stopped by the need to move a tower. The original work was in charge of the construction company Isolux, interviewed in the "K notebooks". Now it is run at its own pace by another firm: Tel 3.

But by nightfall, the only 500 kV line available, here called Colonia Elía-Campana, was parallel to this name and to a similar name.

This high-voltage line is owned by Transener, part of the Pampa Energy group, but its origin on the dam is under the control of Yacylec, a company of which Sideco American is a shareholder, a signature of the Macri family.

The end of the wick

Due to this decision, and for reasons that, according to the government, are the subject of an investigation, the high-voltage line between Mercedes-Colonia Elia has also been disengaged. At that time, there was a dynamic instability in the entire electrical system of the Argentine interconnection system (Sadi).

"Although, the Colonia Elía-Nueva Campana line is not available, the system is ready to withstand the disengagement of another line at 500 kV, in which case two lines were disconnected simultaneously", Cammesa said in his report on the event.

For the company in charge of the management of the system, this "abnormal weakening" of the transport network probably destabilized the Yacyretá and Salto Grande power stations and their contributions, estimated at about 3,700 megawatts, were lost.

Even in this case, the system should have worked because it is ready to automatically wipe out a similar request to the lost generation and immediately restore the balance. "The fall of a 500 line can not destroy the entire system," repeat the technicians. This is precisely the big mystery to solve.

"She is investigating whether automatic cuts, which affect all distribution companies and large users, have worked well," said Cammesa.

Chain effect in five countries

In this transitional process, as in a domino, other additional generators have been disengaged, including the Embalse nuclear power plant in Córdoba, and the entire national system has been regained with a generation deficit that led to a "collapse".

With the departure of Salto Grande, a large part of Uruguay was found without electricity because at that time, the neighboring country was covered by half of the Salto Grande generation.

When energy from Yacyretá was cut off, the Garabí conversion station, which supplies southern Brazil, was also without electricity. This unit goes from 50 cycles to 60, with which this country is working.

Paraguay, in turn, is fed in part by Itaipu (the binational of this country with Brazil). The Argentine part of the Valle de Hayes transformer station broke down and caused a partial cut.

From the Rincón de Santa María transformer station in Yacyretá, the entire NOA is routed via ET Resistencia to Termoandes, Salta. From here to El Bracho, Salta, one of the starting points of energy for Córdoba.

At the same time, via Termoandes, a line parallel to the Tren de las Nubes trail leading to Antofagasta (Chile) is used. Everything was without electricity.

Immediately, known the breakdown, El Chocón tried to inject energy and could not. The "black starts" of several thermoelectric plants did not work either. These are diesel generators that excite the magnetic fields of the dynamos that produce electricity in this type of plant.

Location of Córdoba

Epec tried to isolate Sadi to use its own production resources. He could not enter "island" in an area including Córdoba and San Luis. Synchronization protections between subnetworks in the distribution network had disadvantages. "They had to wait until ET Almafuerte was powered by Rosario Este to start delivering the freight," said a Cammesa source.

Finally, with this maneuver and thanks to the tireless efforts of the company's technicians, after 14 hours, almost seven hours later, the province began to restore service, which completely normalized in the late afternoon. .

The discussion on the attribution of responsibilities could relate to this sentence difficult to understand for most people: the dynamic stability of the food systems. Analyzing this scenario involves conducting highly specialized technical studies, considered by some to be manipulable.

Why can the discussion some people predict happening there be free of political condiments? Yacyretá connects with the Sadi by Yacylec. Sideco Americana is a shareholder of this company. But the failure occurred on the Transener system. Whose fault is it?