17 ms·

All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

292 points by ToFab123 7y ago

mromanuk 7y ago
I was going to post this. Thanks. Looks like Uruguay, Paraguay, south of Brazil, Bolivia are also affected. Several million people. It’s raining, no internet, this will be a long Sunday. Also today is father’s day, will be a celebration with candles like in XIX :)
- cesarb 7y ago
  > south of Brazil That sounded strange to me, since Brazil imports power from Uruguay and Argentina through somewhat small DC links, and if only them failing is enough to cause a blackout in Brazil, something was probably not configured correctly. So I went looking, and according to https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2019/06/16/apagao-deixa-milhoes-sem-energia-na-argentina-e-no-uruguai.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2019/06/16/apagao-deixa-m... "deixou sem energia toda a Argentina, Uruguai, Paraguai e sul do Brasil", so Paraguay was also affected. Paraguay shares the huge Itaipu dam with Brazil, and a large amount of power in Brazil comes from the Itaipu dam, so if Paraguay was affected, Brazil (mostly the south and southwest) will probably also be affected. edit: the realtime graphs at http://www.ons.org.br/pt/paginas/energia-agora/carga-e-geracao http://www.ons.org.br/pt/paginas/energia-agora/carga-e-gerac... show a loss of around 1.3 GW of hydroelectric generation in the south region starting around 7:00 and ending around 10:00, matching the timing of the blackout.
  - paulvs 7y ago
    According to Paraguayan news [1] (Spanish), the failure was on the Argentina side of the Yacyretá hydroelectric (which is shared by Argentina and Paraguay), not at the plant itself. Only a few Paraguayan towns close to the hydroelectric itself were affected, while Argentina and countries it resells electricity to were out of power.
    - davps 7y ago
      I can confirm, at Paraguay, only two small towns (Pilar y Ayolas) where affected and for a short period of time. Source: I live at Paraguay.
      - paulvs 7y ago
        Nice to see Paraguay present here on HN, I live here in Asunción. I also heard of some people near Luque without power Sunday and Monday, but I'd guess it was an unrelated ANDE incident.
- jahitr 7y ago
  I was on the Internet (In Argentina) the whole day. :)
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  It isn't Father's Day in Uruguay, Brazil, or Bolivia. Not every country in the world celebrates holidays on the same day that US Congress designates them.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
kasperni 7y ago
Argentina is world’s eighth largest country. I find it mind blowing that you can have a power outage that covers the whole country (+ some more).
- lugg 7y ago
  USA isn't in much of a better position. Large scale transformer blowouts are a nightmare scenario due to how long they take to replace / repair.
  - cronix 7y ago
    Even worse when a generator goes out (or is destroyed). It can take months to get a new one. Hope we don't have multiple generators go out at once. They're not just sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be picked up.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      how much redundant capacity does the grid have ?
      - 6thaccount2 7y ago
        It depends on what time of the year it is. During Winter Peak on the East Coast (ISO-NE/PJM/NYISO) or Summer Peak in the ERCOT/SPP regions, you might not have a huge amount of reserves left. The shoulder months would be much nicer, but that is when many generators go on outage for repairs, so you have other problems. One of the biggest issues is that traditional resources (coal, nuclear, gas) can run for long periods of time and in many places have a pretty reliable fuel supply. Renewables are great, but you could be generating lots of power one minute and then it's all gone the next hour. This causes a lot of stress on traditional resources which need to be ready to counteract this. Coal plants and gas plants were never designed for that either and it's causing issues.
    - powerbroker 7y ago
      This is the nightmare scenario that we would have if a Carrington-class solar flare hit the earth. Many transformers would be blown out by the induced electricity in power lines. The attached article describes economic losses in the trillions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012
cwperkins 7y ago
Reminds me of the outage that hit the Northeast U.S. in the early 2000s.
thekingofh 7y ago
Does it have something to do with the Copa America that's currently going on right now? Maybe more people inside watching the games and using up power.
- hfkajshfaks 7y ago
  It's winter in Argentina now, so they don't have AC loads. TVs are small by comparison (Although it's fascinating to see how load changes during large games: you can spot commercials, for example!)
  - floatrock 7y ago
    In the UK, this phenomenon is called the TV Pickup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup Basically a commercial break comes on, everyone turns on their tea kettle and flushes their toilets, and bam: 200-400 MW spike in demand. There's some blogs out there charting this during big world cup games.
    - kabwj 7y ago
      >There is a common misconception that the number one driver of TV pickup is the boiling of kettles. In fact, this only creates a pull on the local network for a short period of time until the water has boiled, and can therefore be managed relatively easily, whereas flushing the toilet causes a longer surge at the water and sewerage pumping stations, and opening the refrigerator lets the chilled air escape, causing the compressor to run. These loads are more of a problem for the grid.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        dry toilets and solar concentrator kettles, yesterday
        llukas 7y ago
        Or battery to handle short spike in demand (backed with gas turbine if risk of prolonged spikes).
niftich 7y ago
CAMMESA administers the Argentinian electricity market, and they have data on demand [1] and grid flows. Compare the graph of flows on the 500 kV lines from 2019-06-16T07:00 local [2] to one hour later at 08:00 local [3]. For reference, see the prior day too, at 2019-06-15T08:00 local [4]. [1] http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Pages/ADemandas.aspx http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Pages/ADemandas.aspx [2] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&15/06/2019%2007:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2... [3] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&15/06/2019%2008:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2... [4] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&16/06/2019%2008:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2...
- hfkajshfaks 7y ago
  I don't understand why BsAs temperature would drop just because the e got knocked off, or why it ceases to be an analog function after the cut :S
  - cesarb 7y ago
    My guess would be that it's an average of several temperature sensors, and that a sensor going offline registers as zero. So when the sensors come back online, there's a sudden jump in the calculated average temperature.
    - dep_b 7y ago
      The power drops so often that Argentina would be quite a bit warmer than officially registered here if it were true.
- alins 7y ago
  [2] and [3] refer to June 15; [4] refers to June 16. Is your text correct? What can be learned from the numbers on the 500 kV lines?
  - 7y ago
alganet 7y ago
There was a coronal hole open these days, any chance this is related to sun activity?
- olivermarks 7y ago
  seems unlikely given the very low sun spot activity in our current minimum
  - lgats 7y ago
    https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-community-dashboard https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-communi...
Scoundreller 7y ago
How resilient has the cellular phone network been in this outage? How resilient is the municipal water system in an outage like this? Do most people in Argentina and Uruguay cook with (piped/tank) gas or electric ranges?
- fbellag 7y ago
  At least in Buenos Aires metro area where I live, cell, water and gas are working ok. Water may be an issue if this continues as the pipe pressure is not enough to fill up the buildings tanks, so you'll need to go to ground level with buckets or similar. In all of the countries affected the standard way to cook is natural gas, so we should be good in that front until power is up again. I'm getting reports from friends and family that different zones of the metro area are getting powered as I write. Me, still no luck... Hopefully in the next hour!
- techas 7y ago
  My family at the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires run out of water during Sunday. Cell phones where working intermittently.
- kragen 7y ago
  I haven't tracked the cellphone network status continuously, but here in Buenos Aires, I had a VoIP call from 8:30 to 9:00 which worked fine. Until it didn't, at about 9:00, but that's par for the course with fucking Movistar. I was using cellphone data because the power was out in the house. I didn't realize it was out in the entire country. Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of a water service loss due to a power outage), but the pressure in the pipes is so low that every individual house has a pump to raise the water into a rooftop tank. These pumps are invariably electric and powered from either the grid or, on the frequent occasions that doesn't work, a generator. Municipal water typically has service losses a few times a year, but not due to blackouts. Gas stoves are far more common in Argentina than electric stoves, although my apartment has an electric stove, which has a short which electrifies the stainless-steel surface of the stove when it's turned on. Most people in and near the capital run their gas stoves and on-demand hot-water heaters from public-utility natural gas, supplied by local monopolies (state-owned in some cases). Propane cylinders are common in less-populated areas and in houses where the gas piping has been disconnected from the public utility, usually due to billing disputes or safety concerns. Over the last few years, the utilities have been sandbagging gas reconnections after disconnections due to safety concerns, often allowing them to leave unprofitable customers disconnected for years at a time once someone has called in a gas leak, while they wait for the government price controls (which have fallen far behind our absurd levels of inflation) to be loosened, making those customers' business profitable again. This has been a significant reason for new installations of electrical cooking and hot-water-heating appliances. A court recently ruled against this practice, and so gas reconnections have been sped up lately. Uruguay has much less use of natural gas, for regulatory reasons: gas appliances can only be installed indoors if the room in which they are installed has a window to the outside that cannot be closed, thus removing the risk of explosions in the case of a gas leak. Consequently in Uruguay gas stoves are almost unheard of, and nearly all cooking is electric. Many hot-water heaters in Uruguay are still the gas-powered tankless type that is nearly universal in Argentina, though. They're just installed outdoors. (Actually, I'm not sure if the above information about Uruguay applies outside of Montevideo.) I hope this information is interesting to you!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rafaelm 7y ago
We just went through a couple of outages in Venezuela. The first one was 5 days, the second one 3 days. After day 2 you start getting worried because everything failed, including the water service (they've been badly maintained and they don't generate their own power) and cell phone service. Lots of already scarce food was lost because people had no way to refrigerate it. At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. Getting in touch with my parents in another city was like sending messages in a bottle. I sent an SMS, once a day they moved to one of the few places where there was still cell phone service and replied. Since the main issue that caused the huge outages hasn't been resolved yet, we still get daily power rationing. I'm sitting here in the dark typing, 4 hours so far without power. Hope the situation in Argentina gets resolved quickly!
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  That is scary. Our distant family in Venezuela have fled to Chile. Those left behind have died.
  - rafaelm 7y ago
    Yeah, it's a scary situation. A couple of days into the outage you start to hear about people looting and you can understand how a situation like that can get out of hand really fast. As a curious note, my sister fled to Bs. Aires a few months ago (along with a the thousands of others that have been leaving), now she's going through this blackout over there.
- pif 7y ago
  > At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. It's always nice to rediscover human warmth within such tragedies.
- martinvol 7y ago
  The situation in Argentina was completely different. This was a one time thing that was sorted out in 6 hours and it's very unlikely that will happen again.
pauljurczak 7y ago
Power grid hacking exercise?
- stebann 7y ago
  Maybe. Maybe not. Forensics are on it now.
EGreg 7y ago
I really take no pleasure in saying this THE PROBLEM IS CENTRALIZATION!!!! In this case, of the electric grids. In USA there are a few huge transformers that can be knocked out with an EMP, carrington event or otherwise, and plunge the USA into a similar situation. We need to decentralize: Electric grids (solar, etc.) Cellphone towers and ISPs (mesh networks) Social software and collaboration (open source software platforms to replace Facebook and Google) I am a big believer in this, and I have led Qbix to reinvest nearly a million dollars of our company’s revenues to build towards this future: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY https://qbix.com/blog https://qbix.com/blog Happy to answer any questions / comments / threats :)
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Are you sure that the problem is centralization and not interconnectedness? I think if Argentina had just one generating plant they would have found it a lot easier to get things back up and running - no coordination problems - and if they had a few dozen independent grids then only a handful of them would have been affected (just one, or even none). The grid, as it exists today, is rather distributed - hundreds of generating plants in both US East and US West, and I imagine the situation is similar in South America.
- ahje 7y ago
  Considering the current advances in solar technology, I think we'll soon hit the point where a local power grid powered by solar panels and batteries will be more efficient for people living a bit remote, and I do believe that we will see a larger amount of people living "off-grid" in the rural areas of the future. Communications networks are the big problem, but sattellite-based solutions like Starlink might help in that regard. Problem is that none of it will help if the Sun decides to throw a bunch of star stuff our way; local grids will be just as fried as the big ones, and it's better to make sure people are able to survive on their own without electricity for at least a few days.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 7y ago
dredmorbius 7y ago
David E Nye's When the Lights Went Out traces the history and impacts of blackouts within the U.S. https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-the-lights-went-out-a-history-of-blackouts-in-america/oclc/842500035 https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-the-lights-went-out-a-hi...
bestCauliflower 7y ago
Might it have something to do with this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190025 I just find the timing amusing to be honest. If both Russia and the US are vulnerable to cyber attacks on the power grid, there is no doubt in my mind that Argentina is much more vulnerable.

292 points by ToFab123 7y ago

I was going to post this. Thanks. Looks like Uruguay, Paraguay, south of Brazil, Bolivia are also affected. Several million people. It’s raining, no internet, this will be a long Sunday. Also today is father’s day, will be a celebration with candles like in XIX :)

cesarb 7y ago
> south of Brazil That sounded strange to me, since Brazil imports power from Uruguay and Argentina through somewhat small DC links, and if only them failing is enough to cause a blackout in Brazil, something was probably not configured correctly. So I went looking, and according to https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2019/06/16/apagao-deixa-milhoes-sem-energia-na-argentina-e-no-uruguai.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2019/06/16/apagao-deixa-m... "deixou sem energia toda a Argentina, Uruguai, Paraguai e sul do Brasil", so Paraguay was also affected. Paraguay shares the huge Itaipu dam with Brazil, and a large amount of power in Brazil comes from the Itaipu dam, so if Paraguay was affected, Brazil (mostly the south and southwest) will probably also be affected. edit: the realtime graphs at http://www.ons.org.br/pt/paginas/energia-agora/carga-e-geracao http://www.ons.org.br/pt/paginas/energia-agora/carga-e-gerac... show a loss of around 1.3 GW of hydroelectric generation in the south region starting around 7:00 and ending around 10:00, matching the timing of the blackout.
- paulvs 7y ago
  According to Paraguayan news [1] (Spanish), the failure was on the Argentina side of the Yacyretá hydroelectric (which is shared by Argentina and Paraguay), not at the plant itself. Only a few Paraguayan towns close to the hydroelectric itself were affected, while Argentina and countries it resells electricity to were out of power.
  - davps 7y ago
    I can confirm, at Paraguay, only two small towns (Pilar y Ayolas) where affected and for a short period of time. Source: I live at Paraguay.
    - paulvs 7y ago
      Nice to see Paraguay present here on HN, I live here in Asunción. I also heard of some people near Luque without power Sunday and Monday, but I'd guess it was an unrelated ANDE incident.
jahitr 7y ago
I was on the Internet (In Argentina) the whole day. :)
freddie_mercury 7y ago
It isn't Father's Day in Uruguay, Brazil, or Bolivia. Not every country in the world celebrates holidays on the same day that US Congress designates them.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

kasperni 7y ago

Argentina is world’s eighth largest country. I find it mind blowing that you can have a power outage that covers the whole country (+ some more).

lugg 7y ago
USA isn't in much of a better position. Large scale transformer blowouts are a nightmare scenario due to how long they take to replace / repair.
- cronix 7y ago
  Even worse when a generator goes out (or is destroyed). It can take months to get a new one. Hope we don't have multiple generators go out at once. They're not just sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be picked up.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    how much redundant capacity does the grid have ?
    - 6thaccount2 7y ago
      It depends on what time of the year it is. During Winter Peak on the East Coast (ISO-NE/PJM/NYISO) or Summer Peak in the ERCOT/SPP regions, you might not have a huge amount of reserves left. The shoulder months would be much nicer, but that is when many generators go on outage for repairs, so you have other problems. One of the biggest issues is that traditional resources (coal, nuclear, gas) can run for long periods of time and in many places have a pretty reliable fuel supply. Renewables are great, but you could be generating lots of power one minute and then it's all gone the next hour. This causes a lot of stress on traditional resources which need to be ready to counteract this. Coal plants and gas plants were never designed for that either and it's causing issues.
  - powerbroker 7y ago
    This is the nightmare scenario that we would have if a Carrington-class solar flare hit the earth. Many transformers would be blown out by the induced electricity in power lines. The attached article describes economic losses in the trillions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012

cwperkins 7y ago

Reminds me of the outage that hit the Northeast U.S. in the early 2000s.

thekingofh 7y ago

Does it have something to do with the Copa America that's currently going on right now? Maybe more people inside watching the games and using up power.

hfkajshfaks 7y ago
It's winter in Argentina now, so they don't have AC loads. TVs are small by comparison (Although it's fascinating to see how load changes during large games: you can spot commercials, for example!)
- floatrock 7y ago
  In the UK, this phenomenon is called the TV Pickup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup Basically a commercial break comes on, everyone turns on their tea kettle and flushes their toilets, and bam: 200-400 MW spike in demand. There's some blogs out there charting this during big world cup games.
  - kabwj 7y ago
    >There is a common misconception that the number one driver of TV pickup is the boiling of kettles. In fact, this only creates a pull on the local network for a short period of time until the water has boiled, and can therefore be managed relatively easily, whereas flushing the toilet causes a longer surge at the water and sewerage pumping stations, and opening the refrigerator lets the chilled air escape, causing the compressor to run. These loads are more of a problem for the grid.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      dry toilets and solar concentrator kettles, yesterday
      - llukas 7y ago
        Or battery to handle short spike in demand (backed with gas turbine if risk of prolonged spikes).

niftich 7y ago

CAMMESA administers the Argentinian electricity market, and they have data on demand [1] and grid flows. Compare the graph of flows on the 500 kV lines from 2019-06-16T07:00 local [2] to one hour later at 08:00 local [3]. For reference, see the prior day too, at 2019-06-15T08:00 local [4]. [1] http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Pages/ADemandas.aspx http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Pages/ADemandas.aspx [2] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&15/06/2019%2007:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2... [3] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&15/06/2019%2008:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2... [4] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%20Geografico&16/06/2019%2008:00 http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2...

hfkajshfaks 7y ago
I don't understand why BsAs temperature would drop just because the e got knocked off, or why it ceases to be an analog function after the cut :S
- cesarb 7y ago
  My guess would be that it's an average of several temperature sensors, and that a sensor going offline registers as zero. So when the sensors come back online, there's a sudden jump in the calculated average temperature.
  - dep_b 7y ago
    The power drops so often that Argentina would be quite a bit warmer than officially registered here if it were true.
alins 7y ago
[2] and [3] refer to June 15; [4] refers to June 16. Is your text correct? What can be learned from the numbers on the 500 kV lines?
- 7y ago

alganet 7y ago

There was a coronal hole open these days, any chance this is related to sun activity?

olivermarks 7y ago
seems unlikely given the very low sun spot activity in our current minimum
- lgats 7y ago
  https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-community-dashboard https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-communi...

Scoundreller 7y ago

How resilient has the cellular phone network been in this outage? How resilient is the municipal water system in an outage like this? Do most people in Argentina and Uruguay cook with (piped/tank) gas or electric ranges?

fbellag 7y ago
At least in Buenos Aires metro area where I live, cell, water and gas are working ok. Water may be an issue if this continues as the pipe pressure is not enough to fill up the buildings tanks, so you'll need to go to ground level with buckets or similar. In all of the countries affected the standard way to cook is natural gas, so we should be good in that front until power is up again. I'm getting reports from friends and family that different zones of the metro area are getting powered as I write. Me, still no luck... Hopefully in the next hour!
techas 7y ago
My family at the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires run out of water during Sunday. Cell phones where working intermittently.
kragen 7y ago
I haven't tracked the cellphone network status continuously, but here in Buenos Aires, I had a VoIP call from 8:30 to 9:00 which worked fine. Until it didn't, at about 9:00, but that's par for the course with fucking Movistar. I was using cellphone data because the power was out in the house. I didn't realize it was out in the entire country. Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of a water service loss due to a power outage), but the pressure in the pipes is so low that every individual house has a pump to raise the water into a rooftop tank. These pumps are invariably electric and powered from either the grid or, on the frequent occasions that doesn't work, a generator. Municipal water typically has service losses a few times a year, but not due to blackouts. Gas stoves are far more common in Argentina than electric stoves, although my apartment has an electric stove, which has a short which electrifies the stainless-steel surface of the stove when it's turned on. Most people in and near the capital run their gas stoves and on-demand hot-water heaters from public-utility natural gas, supplied by local monopolies (state-owned in some cases). Propane cylinders are common in less-populated areas and in houses where the gas piping has been disconnected from the public utility, usually due to billing disputes or safety concerns. Over the last few years, the utilities have been sandbagging gas reconnections after disconnections due to safety concerns, often allowing them to leave unprofitable customers disconnected for years at a time once someone has called in a gas leak, while they wait for the government price controls (which have fallen far behind our absurd levels of inflation) to be loosened, making those customers' business profitable again. This has been a significant reason for new installations of electrical cooking and hot-water-heating appliances. A court recently ruled against this practice, and so gas reconnections have been sped up lately. Uruguay has much less use of natural gas, for regulatory reasons: gas appliances can only be installed indoors if the room in which they are installed has a window to the outside that cannot be closed, thus removing the risk of explosions in the case of a gas leak. Consequently in Uruguay gas stoves are almost unheard of, and nearly all cooking is electric. Many hot-water heaters in Uruguay are still the gas-powered tankless type that is nearly universal in Argentina, though. They're just installed outdoors. (Actually, I'm not sure if the above information about Uruguay applies outside of Montevideo.) I hope this information is interesting to you!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rafaelm 7y ago

We just went through a couple of outages in Venezuela. The first one was 5 days, the second one 3 days. After day 2 you start getting worried because everything failed, including the water service (they've been badly maintained and they don't generate their own power) and cell phone service. Lots of already scarce food was lost because people had no way to refrigerate it. At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. Getting in touch with my parents in another city was like sending messages in a bottle. I sent an SMS, once a day they moved to one of the few places where there was still cell phone service and replied. Since the main issue that caused the huge outages hasn't been resolved yet, we still get daily power rationing. I'm sitting here in the dark typing, 4 hours so far without power. Hope the situation in Argentina gets resolved quickly!

mensetmanusman 7y ago
That is scary. Our distant family in Venezuela have fled to Chile. Those left behind have died.
- rafaelm 7y ago
  Yeah, it's a scary situation. A couple of days into the outage you start to hear about people looting and you can understand how a situation like that can get out of hand really fast. As a curious note, my sister fled to Bs. Aires a few months ago (along with a the thousands of others that have been leaving), now she's going through this blackout over there.
pif 7y ago
> At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. It's always nice to rediscover human warmth within such tragedies.
martinvol 7y ago
The situation in Argentina was completely different. This was a one time thing that was sorted out in 6 hours and it's very unlikely that will happen again.

pauljurczak 7y ago

Power grid hacking exercise?

stebann 7y ago
Maybe. Maybe not. Forensics are on it now.

EGreg 7y ago

I really take no pleasure in saying this THE PROBLEM IS CENTRALIZATION!!!! In this case, of the electric grids. In USA there are a few huge transformers that can be knocked out with an EMP, carrington event or otherwise, and plunge the USA into a similar situation. We need to decentralize: Electric grids (solar, etc.) Cellphone towers and ISPs (mesh networks) Social software and collaboration (open source software platforms to replace Facebook and Google) I am a big believer in this, and I have led Qbix to reinvest nearly a million dollars of our company’s revenues to build towards this future: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY https://qbix.com/blog https://qbix.com/blog Happy to answer any questions / comments / threats :)

DuskStar 7y ago
Are you sure that the problem is centralization and not interconnectedness? I think if Argentina had just one generating plant they would have found it a lot easier to get things back up and running - no coordination problems - and if they had a few dozen independent grids then only a handful of them would have been affected (just one, or even none). The grid, as it exists today, is rather distributed - hundreds of generating plants in both US East and US West, and I imagine the situation is similar in South America.
ahje 7y ago
Considering the current advances in solar technology, I think we'll soon hit the point where a local power grid powered by solar panels and batteries will be more efficient for people living a bit remote, and I do believe that we will see a larger amount of people living "off-grid" in the rural areas of the future. Communications networks are the big problem, but sattellite-based solutions like Starlink might help in that regard. Problem is that none of it will help if the Sun decides to throw a bunch of star stuff our way; local grids will be just as fried as the big ones, and it's better to make sure people are able to survive on their own without electricity for at least a few days.
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[deleted]
7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

David E Nye's When the Lights Went Out traces the history and impacts of blackouts within the U.S. https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-the-lights-went-out-a-history-of-blackouts-in-america/oclc/842500035 https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-the-lights-went-out-a-hi...

bestCauliflower 7y ago

Might it have something to do with this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190025 I just find the timing amusing to be honest. If both Russia and the US are vulnerable to cyber attacks on the power grid, there is no doubt in my mind that Argentina is much more vulnerable.