Reuters:A major electricity outage left tens of millions of people in Brazil's two biggest cities without power on Tuesday night due to problems with the transmission lines that connect to the massive Itaipu dam.Yesterday's blackout was partially a fluke of infrastructure, but it also underscores a serious weakness in Brazil's electrical system. There isn't much resiliency built in and there are systemic points of failure. Combine that with rising demand and it's a pretty safe prediction that this wasn't a one time event.
The blackout affected Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as cities in at least four other states, hitting the industrialized southeastern part of Latin America's largest country especially hard. All of Paraguay, which gets most of its energy from the dam, was also briefly left in the dark.
It's not just Brazil. Ecuador declared an electricity emergency last week and began rationing. A number of analysts are focused on Venezuela, whose infrastructure problems are widely reported in the media. But unfortunate weather patterns and Chavez's mismanagement of the domestic energy sector may just have sped up what appears to be an emerging regional trend. Electrical generation and distribution infrastructure is not keeping up with demand in much of Central and South America. Across the region, this will become a political issue that impacts elections and political stability if countries don't start taking this issue more seriously.
