Fault in the Itaipu hydroelectric plant leaves much of Paraguay without power

A fault in a transmission line from the Itaipu hydroelectric plant left 70% of Paraguay’s National Administration of Electricity (ANDE) users in the dark this Saturday, the 28th, which hours later reported the restoration of service throughout the country.

On Twitter, ANDE said that at 10:00 a.m. (local time), a “disturbance was registered in the electrical system, which affected the supply to several locations.

The technical manager of the agency, Miguel Báez, told the local television station C9N that it was an “event” registered by the electrical system that activated the protection mechanism.

The ANDE representative explained that due to the protection system, the 500kV overhead transmission line that goes from the Itaipú dam to the city of Villa Hayes in the central region of Paraguay was taken out of service.

A second 500kv transmission line was also affected, between the town of Ayolas, in the southern province of Misiones, and Villa Hayes.

According to Báez, “70% of ANDE’s users were affected by the event.”

The technical manager added that the normalization of service took from 15 minutes to a little over an hour, depending on the region.

The specialist, however, denied “categorically” to the Telefuturo television station that the incident was related to a system overload.

The Itaipu hydroelectric plant covers about 85% of Paraguay’s energy demand and about 12% of Brazil’s and is the second largest in the world.

With information from EFE/Jovem Pan