Minister asks PF and Abin to investigate possible human action in Tuesday's blackout
The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, gave a press conference to talk about the electrical failure that impacted the country this Tuesday morning. The incident took place at exactly 8:31 am and affected all national states, with the exception of Roraima. To date, the federal government has not come up with the underlying cause of this failure.
According to the minister, the supply was restored at 2:30 pm throughout the National Interconnected System - Photo Reproduction/Joédson Alves
O Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, announced that he will ask the Federal police (PF) from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) carrying out an investigation to determine whether the blackout that occurred on the morning of Tuesday (15) was possibly caused by human action. The incident, the cause of which has yet to be clarified by the authorities, impacted around 29 million Brazilians in 25 states and the Federal District, with the exception of the state of Roraima, which is not connected to the national electricity system and, therefore, was not affected by the incident.
"Since it is a highly sensitive sector, in addition to determining the due and internal investigations by the ONS, Aneel and our related companies, I am officiating to the Ministry of Justice, so that a request for the initiation of a police investigation is sent to the Federal Police to investigate with details of what could have happened, in addition to diagnosing only where it happened. We are going to send both the PF and Abin the establishment of procedures to investigate possible fraud in what happened today", said the minister.
According to the minister, the incident on Tuesday is classified as "exceptionally unusual" to occur, as the country has a robust redundancy system. For an event of such magnitude to occur, it would be necessary for two events to coincide simultaneously on high-capacity transmission lines.
The minister has not yet provided a precise explanation about the causes of the blackout. He mentions the occurrence of events in the system as responsible. Technical details will be made available at an appropriate time within the next 48 hours.
Energy capacity
Silveira was keen to point out that the recent blackout has no relation, absolutely no connection with energy supply and security in Brazil. At the current moment, Brazilian reservoirs are going through a period of considerable abundance, he pointed out. In addition, the minister also communicated that "precisely at 14:49, the system was completely restored". However, due to specific adjustments, not all users were able to regain access to electricity. The minister emphasized that the estimate is that by the end of the afternoon, all consumers will have their services restored.
Blackout
The incident of power outage that impacted part of the Brazilian territory this Tuesday morning began with its detection in the systems of the National System Operator (ONS), precisely at 8:31 am in Brasilia time. At that time, the usual increase in demand on the electrical system was interrupted. Surprisingly, in an interval of just ten minutes, the electrical load of the national system withstood considerably, registering a drop of 25.9%.
The information derives from measurements carried out by the ONS in the context of the National Integrated System (SIN). Before the occurrence of the event, at 8:30 am Brasília time, Brazil had an electrical capacity of 73,484.7 MW, showing an upward trajectory, as is usual in the mornings. However, one minute later, that is, at 8:31 am, the system load suffered a sudden reduction of about 7%, surprising this previous trend.
The pressure loss continued during the subsequent minutes until reaching 8:40 am, when the system recorded the lowest pressure level of the day, totaling 54,383.7 MW. SIN data indicated that, in a ten-minute interval, there was a loss of pressure greater than a quarter of the system energy. From 8:41 am the pressure began to gradually recover; however, as of 9:30 am, the pressure had still not reached the levels observed before what happened an hour earlier.
Disorders
The blackout caused several problems in the Brazilian states. The subway systems in Belo Horizonte, Salvador and São Paulo were impacted by the interruption in the energy supply. An almost immediate consequence was the deactivation of traffic lights in several regions of the country, causing traffic chaos in several Brazilian cities. In addition, part of the population was deprived of access to water. Residents of the Belém Metropolitan Region, as well as cities in the northeast, southwest and southeast of the country, reported water shortages following the power outage.
Several educational institutions chose to close their activities early due to the blackout. Merchants were also not immune to the impacts caused by the blackout and difficulties in operating the Pix service. In addition, there were situations in which candles had to be used in order to serve customers. Health care and mobile services sectors also reported problems caused by the blackout.
