Power was restored in Brazil on Tuesday afternoon after people in most parts of the north and northeast regions of the country had to stay without electricity for nearly six hours.
The major blackout occurred around 8:30 a.m. local time. Power supplies in the southeast part of Brazil were also disrupted, AP News reported.
As per G1, at least 19 states in the country and the capital city of Brasilia were affected by the blackout, which made it difficult to use public transportation, among other things.
In major cities like Salvador, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, passengers had to evacuate subway lines. Traffic lights were also not working in many cities, causing disruption in places such as Belem, Teresina and Fortaleza.
In Pará and Amapá, residents were also left without water. People in Greater Belém and cities across the state's northeast, southwest and southeast reported a water shortage following the blackout.
Roraima was unaffected by the blackout because the Brazilian state is powered by local thermoelectric plants that run on diesel.
According to Reuters, private power firms operating in the country were also affected by the blackout. Soon after the outage, Equatorial Energia and Enel Brasil said they were resuming power supply to their clients. CPFL Energia said that supply had already resumed for all customers.
Brazil's Mining and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira gave updates about the situation on social media. The minister, who was in Paraguay with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the inauguration of Santiago Peña, wrote Tuesday afternoon that the "situation regarding the restoration of energy in all regions of Brazil is 100% normalized, as of 2.49 pm."
He shared that the power was back in the "South, Southeast and Midwest regions about 45 minutes after the incident, in the morning."
Informo que a situação do reestabelecimento de energia em todas as regiões do Brasil está 100% normalizada, desde às 14h49. Vale destacar que as regiões Sul, Sudeste e Centro Oeste foram restituídas cerca de 45 minutos após o incidente, pela manhã. pic.twitter.com/go5nNALo0T
— Alexandre Silveira (@asilveiramg) August 15, 2023
Silveira added that power in the North and Northeast regions was restored early Tuesday afternoon. He said his team was working to "identify the causes of the interruption of the energy supply."
As regiões Norte e Nordeste foram restauradas neste início de tarde. Determinei também que a ONS e ANEEL intensifiquem, agora, as ações para levantar as causas da interrupção do fornecimento de energia.
— Alexandre Silveira (@asilveiramg) August 15, 2023
According to Silveira, the blackout was caused by an "event" in Ceará and another place that is yet to be identified by authorities. The outage affected 25% of the system load, which means about 16,000 megawatts.
National Electric Energy Agency director Sandoval Feitosa called the blackout a "major event."
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