Trust in single power line played role in Argentine outage

Buenos Aires: Experts say that overconfidence in the capacity of a single transmission line may have played a role in a massive power outage that left Argentina and parts of Uruguay and Paraguay in the dark earlier this week.

Argentina's government said the blackout originated in north-east of the country and hoped to provide a detailed explanation of what caused the outage in about 10 days.

Cars drive past the illuminated Obelisk monument in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after power was restored.Credit: AP

What is known is that just after 7am on Sunday, a first failure occurred on a stretch of transmission line known as Colonia Elia Y Mercedes, which was successfully isolated. Seconds later the anomaly repeated itself in the Colonia Elia-Belgrano stretch. This was not isolated and ended up shutting down the entire grid and leaving tens of millions of people across three countries without power.

AP