Swaths of Argentina on Wednesday were plunged into darkness after a fire on a power line led major parts of the grid to switch off.
The plant was taken offline as a safety precaution, sparking the widespread problems nationwide, Argentina’s national nuclear power authority Nucleoelectrica said.
The fire, on a high-tension line outside the Buenos Aires metro area, triggered a safety system to kick in and turn off several power plants and lines, a government spokeswoman said.
Photo: AP
Engineers rushed to fix the line and reconnect millions of people nationwide, the Argentine Secretariat of Energy said.
In the capital, the lights flickered back on at about 6pm in the metro system, and public services were gradually restored.
Reports of the first outages came in from 4pm to 5pm, with traffic lights out of order and Buenos Aires metro stations in total darkness.
The outages extended from the capital to other industrial and residential hubs in the center of the country, as well as provinces in the northwest, along the Andes, and as far south as Santa Cruz in Patagonia. Plants out of service included major state-run nuclear facilities Atucha I and Embalse.
Local TV station Todo Noticias reported that the grid was unable to meet 40 percent of electricity demand.
Argentina has been suffering heat waves in the past few weeks that cause electricity usage to soar as households and businesses crank up air-conditioning.
The temperature in Buenos Aires on Wednesday soared to 37°C amid the city’s hottest summer in more than a century of record-keeping, the Argentine National Weather Service said.
Heat waves have also compounded a drought that is decimating Argentina’s key soybean crop.
Blackouts are not uncommon for residents of Argentina’s capital, with years of price controls leading to insufficient investment in power grids.
The last major national blackout was in 2019.
Additional reporting by AFP
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