Government to request investigation by the PF and Abin on power interruption

Blackout

According to Alexandre Silveira, this is an extremely rare event.

The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, said this Tuesday (15) that the interruption in the supply of electricity registered in the morning in all regions of the country was an extremely rare event. For this reason, in addition to the internal investigations of the National Electric System Operator (ONS) and the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), the Ministry of Justice and Public Security was asked that the Federal Police and the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) also investigate in detail the causes of the power outage.

“I am absolutely convinced that the ONS, even due to its technical characteristics, will not be able to say textually whether these events were eminently technical, or whether there was also human error or even malice”

said the minister, recalling that the sector is highly strategic, sensitive and fundamental for Brazilian society.

The government already knows that this morning there was an overload in an energy transmission line in Ceará, which caused the system to collapse in the North and Northeast regions. When this occurred, the ONS modulated the load that was being sent to the South, Southeast and Midwest, as a form of protection, which caused the energy to be reduced in these regions. There were at least 16,000 megawatts (MW) of power outages.

According to the minister, the ONS will still assess whether there was another event at the same time, in another part of the country. “The only event that can be said is this one in Ceará. There is still no other event pointed out by the ONS, but it is assumed that we had a second event that caused this event of this magnitude.”, he said. Silveira pointed out that the country works with a redundant energy system and, for there to have been an interruption of this magnitude, two events must have occurred at the same time. Alexandre Silveira cited the cases of attacks on power transmission towers recorded in January this year.

“Thanks to the robustness of our system, for an event of this magnitude to occur, there must be a redundancy of relevant facts”

, he said. The forecast is that, within 48 hours, the ONS will point out what caused the system to have this interruption.

According to the MME, in the South, Southeast and Midwest regions, energy returned about an hour after the interruption and, in the North and Northeast, the supply was completely restored at 2:49 pm.

The minister explained that what happened today has nothing to do with Brazil’s energy supply and security. “We live in a moment of abundance in reservoirs”highlighted Silveira, recalling that recently Brazil exported energy to Argentina when the Itaipu and Furnas reservoirs were leaking water.

The power outage reached 25 states and the Federal District. The only state that was not affected was Roraima, which is not part of the National Interconnected System. Around 27 million people were affected, which represents a third of Brazilian consumers.

During the press conference, the minister criticized the privatization of Eletrobras, which owns most of the generation and transmission in Brazil.

“I would be reckless to point out that there is a direct cause [desse evento] with the privatization of Eletrobras. But my position has always been that a sector like this must have a firm hand from the Brazilian State, such as health, security and education”

he said.

*With information from Agência Brasil

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