Environment

Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant Blackout: Brazil in Darkness

by Amy Judd | November 10, 2009 at 05:34 pm

2914 views | 5 Recommendations | 7 comments

Update: 7:50pm PST

The lights are starting to come back on now in Brazil's major cities after millions of people were affected by the blackout. About 80 percent of Brazil's energy is supplied by hydroelectric power.

In Rio's Copacabana neighborhood, cars honked wildly and people shouted as power was restored to the area at 12:37 a.m. Wednesday — more than two hours after it went out.

Previous reporting:

The Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant in Brazil, the largest in the world has stopped working, causing a blackout in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and parts of Paraguay are also experiencing problems.

Update: 6:17pm PST: Power to Paraguay has now been restored, but the rest of the areas are still in darkness.

Backup power plants are not currently working, and reports from the region say that a hydroelectric dam is to blame for the outages.

The G1 Web site of Globo TV says Brazil lost 17,000 megawatts of power after an unspecified problem happened at the Itaipu dam that straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.

Belo Horizonte has also been affected.

The blackout happened at about 10pm local time, causing the underground railway system to shut down, leaving many passengers stranded underground.

The dam has lost its entire hydroelectric output.

Brazil's official Agencia Brasil news agency said Tuesday's outage started about 10:20 p.m. (1220 GMT), snarling streets in Rio after traffic lights stopped working. Subway service was knocked out in both Rio and Sao Paulo, and G1 said Sao Paulo subway users were forced to abandon train cars.

Brazil also experienced a massive blackout in 2007.

This story will be updated when more information is known.

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Eduardo Sortica (not verified)

at 18:01 on November 10th, 2009

Problably a strong stormy which happened in countryside of Parana, State located at Brazil's South region, was the blackout main cause.

carlos tiago (not verified)

at 18:25 on November 10th, 2009

they are saying one or more of the main lines that transmit energy for the entire country, for some reason it crashed and the system turned off the itaipu dam, one of the largests in the world. Strange to turn off a whole dam ...

Amy Judd

at 18:27 on November 10th, 2009

That is very strange indeed

Nayara (not verified)

at 20:10 on November 10th, 2009

Wrong information. Itapu

Nayara (not verified)

at 20:11 on November 10th, 2009

*Itaipu is the source of only 20% of the energy in brazil, not 80%.

Amy Judd

at 20:15 on November 10th, 2009

What I said means 80 percent of Brazil's energy is supplied by hydroelectric power in general, not necessarily Itaipu itself.

Carlos Teixeira (not verified)

at 01:57 on November 11th, 2009

The Brazilian power generation is so strong more that several countries, like USA, according the responsible Brazilian Ministry, Edson Lobão, who said also that unfortunately until now the cause(s) of this blackout was not elucidated. "This blackout occourred during few hours but some years ago NY had for four days" completes the Mines and Energy Brazilian Ministry, Edson Lobão. The interview in live was on ar one minute ago by the BandNews FM Radio at playersradios.band.com.br/?r=rb_bandnewsfm_sao.