WELL!!!!!!! Happy Father's Day! Woke up to this:
BBC News wrote:
Electrical failure cuts power to all of Argentina and Uruguay, supplier says
A massive electrical failure has left almost all of Argentina and Uruguay without power, according to a major Argentine electricity provider.
Parts of Paraguay were also affected, a state energy company said.
Argentine media said the power cut occurred shortly after 07:00 (11:00 BST), causing trains to be halted and failures with traffic signalling.
It came as people in parts of Argentina were preparing to go to the polls for local elections.
What do we know about the blackout?
"A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all of Argentina and Uruguay without power," electricity supply company Edesur said in a tweet.
Alejandra Martinez, a spokeswoman for the company, described the power cut as unprecedented.
"This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country."
The exact cause of the blackout has not yet been determined. Citing official sources, Argentine media reported that it was linked to a failure in the transmission of electricity from the Yacycretá hydroelectric dam.
The Ministry of Civil Protection estimated that parts of the service could be restored in about seven or eight hours.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri said power had been restored to over 50% of clients and local media reported that two airports were operating on generators in the capital. Priority has been given to hospitals.
Uruguay's energy company, UTE, said in a series of tweets that power had been restored to coastal areas and to areas north of Rio Negro.
How have people been affected?
The combined population of Argentina and Uruguay is about 48 million people.
Among the affected provinces in Argentina were Santa Fe, San Luis, Formosa, La Rioja, Chubut, Cordoba and Mendoza, reports said. Tierra del Fuego in the far south is the only area that remains unaffected because it is not connected to the power grid.
In neighbouring Paraguay, parts of Ayolas, Pilar, Villalbín and the border areas of Misiones and Ñeembucú were also without power.
One of Argentina's biggest water companies, Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos, warned those without power to conserve water, as the distribution of drinking water had been affected by the outage.
Social media reports of the power were widespread - from the capital Buenos Aires in the north, to Mendoza in the west and Comodoro Rivadavia in the south, among many other cities. Residents posted pictures of dark towns and cities and long lines of cars queuing at petrol stations.
"Everything came to a halt. Elevators, water pumps, everything. We were left adrift," Juan Borges, who lives in Buenos Aires, told the BBC.
"There are some elderly people on the eighth floor but nothing happened, because the power cut was short. If it had gone on for longer it would have been a whole different story." he said.
People in Buenos Aires are communicating on Whatsapp to pass on information about cafes in the city which appear to have power. Subway services are no longer running.
Local media have been showing voters casting their local election ballots in the dark, with mobile phones being used as lanterns. Elections have been delayed in several regional provinces.
NY Times wrote:
Power Cut Hits Argentina and Uruguay, Affecting Tens of Millions
BUENOS AIRES — A widespread power failure early Sunday left all of mainland Argentina and Uruguay without power, a blackout that an energy company official called “unprecedented.”
The blackout’s cause remained unclear. But much of Argentina was hit by heavy rainfall this weekend, and Uruguay’s state-owned utility, UTE, said some systems were damaged by the recent rain and still needed to be repaired.
The power failure was traced to two 500,000-volt lines in a corridor that takes power to Buenos Aires from the Yacyretá dam, which serves Argentina and Paraguay. But why it occurred was still being determined.
The blackouts brought the transportation system in Buenos Aires to a halt as trains and subways stopped and traffic lights went dark. The water company AySA, based in Buenos Aires, asked customers to ration water because its distribution system had shut down.
Flights operated normally, said Carlos Armentano, a spokesman for Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, the company that runs most of the country’s airports. But Argentine ports came to a standstill for a few hours, said Guillermo Wade, the manager for the Port and Maritime Activities Chamber.
Across the region, residents posted images on social media of their dark towns and cities.
“There is a complete blackout in Argentina,” said Alejandra Martínez, a spokeswoman for Edesur, an electricity company in Argentina which serves parts of Buenos Aires and its suburbs and has more than 2.5 million customers. She said this was unprecedented.
“This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country,” she said.
Argentina has more than 44 million people, while Uruguay’s population is about 3.5 million.
An electrical grid that serves both nations “collapsed” at 7:07 a.m., cutting electricity in all of Argentina and affecting Uruguay as well, the Argentine Secretariat of Energy said.
“The causes have not been determined and are being investigated,” it added.
Edesur announced on Twitter about 7:50 a.m. that a “massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all of Argentina and Uruguay without power.”
Una falla masiva en el sistema de interconexión eléctrica dejó sin energía a toda la Argentina y Uruguay. Ampliaremos con más información. #SinLuz #CortedeLuz
— Edesur Argentina (@OficialEdesur) June 16, 2019
Uruguay’s UTE also said on Twitter that a malfunction in the Argentine network before dawn had left the “entire national territory” without service.
By midday, power was slowly returning to parts of both countries. The Energy Secretariat of Argentina said that one-third of the supply had been restored as of 1:30 p.m.
The systems are resuming “gradually as a result of thermal plants coming into service,” it said.
Isolated neighborhoods in Buenos Aires started getting power by midmorning, and supply returned to normal in the eastern province of Entre Rios. The province of Santa Fe had some power return, and a little more than half of normal power was restored to the western provinces of Mendoza and San Juan.
The Patagonia region got some power back, but the process was delayed by failures in the region’s power plants.
In Uruguay, services north of the Río Negro (Black River) were restored, as well as in some sections of the capital, Montevideo, and surrounding areas and along the coast.
An economist in Uruguay said on Twitter that radio outlets had reported 180,000 customers without power in Montevideo and 45,000 in Canelones, a city to the north of the capital.
In Argentina, only the southern archipelago of Tierra del Fuego appeared to be unaffected, according to local reports.
In 2009, a huge power failure in Brazil involving the world’s largest operating hydroelectric plant caused widespread blackouts that affected tens of millions of people and exposed the vulnerability of the country’s electricity infrastructure.
That failure occurred at the Itaipú plant, which straddles the border between Brazil and Paraguay along the Paraná River and is a critical source of power for both nations.