Argentina has opened an inquiry into what caused a massive blackout that left nearly 50 million people without power, Energy Minister Gustavo Lopetegui said on Monday.
A massive blackout left tens of millions of people without electricity in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and parts of Chile and southern Brazil on Sunday. The Argentine president called it an “unprecedented” failure in the countries' interconnected power grid.
Argentina's Energy Secretary Gustavo Lopetegui described the massive blackout suffered mostly by Argentina and Uruguay, but which also affected areas of neighbouring countries, Paraguay, Chile and Brazil as “an extraordinary event that should have never happened, there are no reasons for it occurring and leaving Argentina completely in the black”.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved two financing packages worth a total of US$ 130 million in support of a program to modernize the Argentine-Uruguayan bi-national hydroelectric power plant in Salto Grande and a program to boost the competitiveness of the productive and tourism sectors of that region, made up of the departments of Concordia and Federacion in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos and Salto department in Uruguay.