Massive South American power failure.

Post by **adam2** » 16 Jun 2019, 13:12

All or virtually all, of Argentina, Paraguay and parts of neighbouring countries blacked out.
Started at about noon, UK time 16/06/2019.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-48652686

ReserveGrowthRulz · Post by **ReserveGrowthRulz** » 16 Jun 2019, 15:24

The "Venezuelan disease" spilling over into other parts of South America?

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 16 Jun 2019, 17:35

Are Argentina, Uraguay and parts of southern Brazil served by the big hydro scheme on the Brazil/Argentina border? There might be separate power stations for the two countries.

BritDownUnder · Post by **BritDownUnder** » 17 Jun 2019, 08:00

kenneal - lagger wrote:Are Argentina, Uraguay and parts of southern Brazil served by the big hydro scheme on the Brazil/Argentina border? There might be separate power stations for the two countries.

I think that Brazil and Paraguay share the large Itaipu hydro electric scheme and those to were not too badly affected. Argentina also has large hydro schemes on the Parana river. Never worked in South America myself but colleagues who have liked it.

Not sure if it is Venezuela Disease - whatever that is - more like a cascading power failure because they did not load shed quickly enough. Venezuela had load shedding earlier in the year due to a drought curtailing output from their large Guri hydro scheme that supplies about 60% of their power. I presume they built that dam with their oil revenues when they invested them in sensible capital projects instead of nowadays using them for paying off loans to Russia and China and generally frittering them away or public officials just stealing them. Perhaps they should have had a sovereign wealth fund like Norway.