The 2011 Chile blackout was a major

power outage A power outage (also called a powercut, a power out, a power failure, a power blackout, a power loss, or a blackout) is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user. There are many causes of power failures in an electricity ...

that occurred on 24 September 2011, approximately between 20:30 and 21:45 local time (23:30 and 00:45 UTC respectively), although the time of reinstatement varied geographically. It mainly affected the regions from

Coquimbo Coquimbo is a port city, commune and capital of the Elqui Province, located on the Pan-American Highway, in the Coquimbo Region of Chile. Coquimbo is situated in a valley south of La Serena, with which it forms Greater La Serena with more than ...

to Maule, where the blackout was total, but it also reportedly partially affected the

Atacama The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the w ...

and Bío Bío regions. The blackout affected approximately nine million Chileans. The cause of the blackout, which started at 20:30 local time ( UTC−03:00), was later determined to be equipment failure at an electrical substation.

Rodrigo Álvarez Zenteno Rodrigo Alejandro Álvarez Zenteno (born 30 July 1966) is a Chilean politician and lawyer who served as Minister of Energy during the first government of Sebastián Piñera Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique OMCh (; born 1 Decembe ...

, Minister of Energy, noted a computer system malfunction and "oscillation problems" affecting two

power lines Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this movement form a ''transmission network''. This is d ...

. The blackout interrupted mobile phone service and forced the evacuation of thousands of rail and

rapid transit Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), also known as heavy rail or metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. A rapid transit system that primarily or traditionally runs below the surface may be ...

passengers in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

, the capital city. It also delayed a concert by pop singer

Ricky Martin Enrique Martín Morales (born December 24, 1971), known professionally as Ricky Martin, is a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter, and actor. He is known for his musical versatility, with his Ricky Martin albums discography, discography spanning ...

A supermarket in

Quilicura Quilicura ( ; ) is a commune of Chile located in capital Santiago. Founded in 1901, it was originally a satellite city on what were then the outskirts of the city of Santiago, but as urban sprawl has set in it is now quickly urbanizing from what w ...

was looted, and a youth was wounded during a confrontation between the looters and police. The outage affected operations at a number of

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

mines, of which Chile is the world's top producer. The Los Bronces mine, operated by Anglo American, halted production temporarily and later, with power from generators, resumed at one-third capacity.

CODELCO Codelco (''Corporación Nacional'' ''del'' ''Cobre de Chile'' or, in English, the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is a Chilean state-owned copper mining company. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationalise ...

, Chile's state-owned copper mining company, reported that its Andina division and the

El Teniente El Teniente ("The Lieutenant") is an underground copper mine located in the Chilean Andes, above mean sea level. It is in the commune of Machalí in Cachapoal Province, Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins Region, near the company town of ...

mine had lost power but continued operations using generators until power was restored.

Investigation

On 6 December 2011, the Chile regulatory authority Superintendency of Electricity and Fuels (SEC) determined that the cause of the blackout was an electrical

short circuit A short circuit (sometimes abbreviated to short or s/c) is an electrical circuit that allows a current to travel along an unintended path with no or very low electrical impedance. This results in an excessive current flowing through the circui ...

in a 220 Kilovolt capacitor bank at the Ancoa electrical substation which is located in

Linares, Chile Linares is a Chilean city and commune located in the Maule Region and lies in the fertile Chilean Central Valley, south of Santiago and south of Talca, the regional capital. Linares is the capital city of the province of Linares. Demograp ...

, and the subsequent malfunction of the associated

protective relay In electrical engineering, a protective relay is a relay device designed to trip a circuit breaker when a fault is detected. The first protective relays were electromagnetic devices, relying on coils operating on moving parts to provide detecti ...

equipment that should have prevented the

cascading failure A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of one or few parts leads to the failure of other parts, growing progressively as a result of positive feedback. This can occur when a single part fails, in ...

. SEC also determined that the time needed to restore power was prolonged by both procedural and equipment issues. As a result of the investigation, SEC has assessed charges against the following four power companies; Transelec,

Endesa (Chile) Endesa, S.A. (, originally an initialism for ''Empresa Nacional de Electricidad, S.A''.) is a Spanish multinational electric utility company, the largest in the country. The firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility company Enel, ...

, Colbún S.A., and Chilectra. The Superintendent of the SEC, Luis Avila Bravo, said "we are making charges for not maintaining the equipment in good condition, which ultimately represents a threat to the power system security as well as for problems in applying the procedures used to restore the supply of power ". Avila added that companies now have 15 days to respond to the charges, after which the SEC may determine sanctions, and possible fines of up to 10,000 AWU (approx. $9M US) although the final amount will depend on the merits of each investigation.

References

{{Energy in Chile Power outages in Chile Blackout September 2011 events in South America

Investigation

See also

References