MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Buenos Aires residents welcome New Year in the dark

The electricity company said the problem was caused by fireworks

Thousands of residents in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires saw the New Year's celebrations brought to an abrupt end when a power cut hit several neighborhoods in the Argentine capital between around 0.30 and 2 am on Jan. 1.

According to the electricity company Edesur, the problem was triggered by a collapse in the high voltage network at 0.23, affecting Caballito, Flores, Liniers, Mataderos, Almagro, and Versalles.

Two hours later, the company announced that supply had been fully restored. However, the National Electricity Regulation Agency (Ente Nacional Regulador de la Electricidad - ENRE) said some 186 users in Balvanera, Villa Devoto, Parque Patricios, Parque Chacabuco, and La Boca were still powerless by noon.

“A problem in the high voltage network generated at 00:23 a cut that affects some neighborhoods of our concession area in Capital Federal”, reported the company through its social networks shortly after the blackout was generated.

The company issued Sunday a statement specifying that the origin of the malfunction was caused by fireworks. “Company technicians detected that a fireworks balloon entered minutes after midnight in the internal patio of the Perito Moreno Substation. This caused a short-circuit that triggered the protections, leaving two transformers of the high voltage network out of service”, explained the company. “Once our teams were able to restore the affected area inside the substation, service was normalized in stages,” the company added.

ENRE's Walter Martello announced that CABA's two electricity suppliers Edesur and Edenor would be fined for the power cuts affecting over 570,000 customers during the weekend of December 10 and 11, in addition to other penalties “applied since September.”

The ENRE informed that “the companies will be ordered to apply automatically the bonus for prolonged outages in cases where the electric service has been affected for more than 36 hours, and they must provide the agency with the list of users affected by this measure”.

Martello also questioned the “lack of foresight of the distributors, when they were warned not only by ENRE but also by private meteorological consultants of the weather situation so that it cannot be shown as an unknown element.”