Transmission
The November 2009 blackout was not caused by a supply issue, the government said. It was caused by a weather-related "short circuit" of three transmission lines carrying power generated by the Itaipú dam. Two of the fallen lines were 765-kV lines located between the towns of Ivaipora (Parana) and Itabera (São Paolo); the third one collapsed between Tijuco and Itabera Petro (São Paolo). The government said in a statement that the three line outages combined to cause cascading outages on the National Interconnected System.
The event highlighted a number of vulnerabilities in the country’s unique energy infrastructure. Unlike the U.S., which has three main regional power grids, almost all of Brazil’s electricity runs through an interconnected network. In the mid-1960s, the existing electricity systems had functioned independently, working in an integrated fashion through regional coordinating groups. In 1998, however, the government, led by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, established the National Operating System, a body responsible for operation of the National Interconnected System. The country then inaugurated the first north-south transmission line, allowing for the exchange of power between the North and Northeast and the rest of the country. In the past decade, the grid expanded more than 35% — reaching a total 86,395 km in 2008 — and now includes all but 3.4% of Brazil’s power capacity.
Today, Brazil has one of the largest interconnected electric grids in the world, which is "fantastic because it facilitates electricity transmission between regions, but the domino effect that happens when we have a problem is a major inconvenience," Mauricio Tolmasquim, president of the federal Energy Research Agency, told Bloomberg in November.
But some analysts disagreed that the November incident was isolated and said that it could happen anywhere, pointing out that the event wasn’t the first time the country had suffered such a large-scale grid-related outage. Three similar incidents occurred involving transmission lines from Itaipú since 1985, the worst of those in 1999, after a lightening bolt struck a power substation in São Paolo state and plunged 97 million Brazilians into darkness for up to five hours.
Many pointed to government neglect of the system — sparking concern all over the world about whether the economic powerhouse’s aging infrastructure could shoulder the enlarged energy burden of hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Brazil’s President Lula defended the grid as "solid," saying that investments in transmission lines over the past seven years amounted to about 30% of what had been spent over the preceding 120 years. Energy Minister Edison Lobão, meanwhile, compared the strength of Brazil’s system with systems in the U.S. and Canada, countries that, he pointed out, had taken days to fully restore power after a blackout turned out the lights for some 50 million in August 2003.
However, the system is not entirely foolproof, government officials conceded in their response to the more ominous allegation made by a CBS "60 Minutes" broadcast just two days before the blackout that the Brazilian grid was vulnerable to hackers. The 2007 two-day blackout in the Atlantic state of Espírito Santo — which the newsmagazine claimed, citing unnamed sources, was triggered by hackers targeting a utility’s control systems — was actually the result of the utility’s negligent maintenance of high-voltage insulators on two transmission lines, they told newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. It was, as the utility initially claimed, dust, and soot from burning fields that had caused the trip. And there was no evidence of hacker attacks in the smaller 2005 blackout north of Rio de Janeiro either, as Raphael Mandarino Jr., director of the Homeland Security Information and Communication Directorate told the newspaper. The official added that Brazil’s electric control systems were not directly connected to the Internet, and that the findings had resulted from yearlong investigations ordered by regulators.
If there is one thing that the night of Nov. 10 proves, it is that there has been a failure in management, according to Ildo Sauer, a professor of energy at the University of São Paulo. "There is not a lack of generation capacity, there is not a lack of transmission capacity, there has not been a lack of investments," Sauer told The New York Times following the blackouts. "What is lacking is management, command, and control of the operations." It was just enough to show that reforms made in 2003 and 2004 "were not sufficient," and that Latin America’s beacon is not shining as brightly as it could.
—Sonal Patel is POWER’s senior writer.
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