page_title: 2019 Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay blackout
section_title: Impact
hierarchical_section_title: 2019 Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay blackout / Impact
caption_attribution_description: Español: La provincia de Formosa votando sin luz, tras el apagón de 2019.
context_page_description: On 16 June 2019, a large-scale power outage struck most of Argentina, all of Uruguay, and parts of Paraguay, leaving an estimated total of 48 million people without electrical supply.
  By the following day it was confirmed that power had been restored to most of Argentina and Uruguay, and Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised a full investigation.
  The blackout is believed to have been caused by an operational misbehavior from Transener, a transmission lines operator in Argentina. A 500 kV line running from Colonia Elía to Campana, crossing the Paraná Guazú river, was down on undergoing maintenance to repair the tower number 412, whose base had been suffering from erosion by the river. The company made a bypass for this tasks, using a nearby overhead line, but missed to reflect that network grid change in the Automatic Generation Shutdown system, which is designed to alert energy generators of network changes that would require a lower of energy generation. This caused, after a short circuit which lowered demand, an excess of power generation in the grid, a lack of synchronization of power plants, loss of balance, and a low frequency in the network.
context_section_description: Because the distribution of drinking water was affected by the power outage, Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos, one of Argentina's biggest water companies, warned people without power to limit their use of water.
  The blackout had an impact on local gubernatorial elections taking place in Argentina, where the lack of power forced voters to fill out ballots in the dark, using their mobile phones as flashlights. In some regions of the country, the elections were postponed by authorities.
  Medical patients who were dependent upon home equipment were urged to attend local hospitals, where similar devices were still operational, as they were powered by backup generators.
caption: People voting in the local elections at the Formosa Province, during the blackout.
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