The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, said this Wednesday (16) that the transmission line that failed on Tuesday (15), in Ceará, belongs to Companhia Hidro Elétrica do São Francisco, Chesf, a subsidiary of Eletrobras. The company, according to him, contacted the National Operator of the Electric System (ONS) admitting the error and confirming that there was a systemic failure.

Silveira said the problem occurred on the Quixadá/Fortaleza transmission line, in Ceará state. The event caused a blackout that affected towns in 25 states and the Federal District. Only Roraima, which is not connected to the National Interconnected System (SIN), was not affected.

According to him, it is not yet possible to say whether the occurrence was the result of human or systemic failure.

“This event was initially considered to be of a small magnitude and, in isolation, it was not enough to cause the collapse of the system as a whole. In other words, from this event, which occurred on an Eletrobras line, from Chesf, due to a programming error, the system was not protected as it should have occurred and caused a series of other failures in the system from that moment on, that will be investigated by the ONS”, he said.

According to the minister, the ONS has not yet identified the events that occurred after the first failure. “Our system is so robust that one event by itself could not bring down the entire system. In other words, it was a series of events that will now be detailed by the ONS.

Questioned about the performance of the ONS, the minister said that the operator has a standard procedure for episodes like Tuesday’s. “The procedure is to increase the security volume in the system, so measures were taken to suspend, in the specific case, the issue of flashing and guarantee greater system resilience,” he said. “It does not have a direct correlation with the incident.”

federal police

Silveira once again argued that it was extremely necessary for the Federal Police to participate in the investigation of the causes of the blackout. “I would like to understand it in another way, but more than ever I believe that the very active participation of the Federal Police in this case is extremely necessary, since the ONS (Operator of the National Electric System) could not point out a technical failure that could cause a event of the dimension of the power outage in the country”, he said.

Silveira reported on Tuesday that he will ask the Ministry of Justice to call the PF and the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) to participate in the investigations. This Wednesday afternoon, the general director of the Federal Police, Andrei Passos Rodrigues, met with the minister.

According to Silveira, the Brazilian Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, ordered the start of a police investigation. “The Federal Police is already mobilized,” he said.

“We have to work with all the hypotheses, because I would very much like to have received from the ONS today (Wednesday) an exclusively technical note that supports what happened yesterday, but unfortunately that was not the position of the ONS,” he added. .

He specified that the participation of the PF in the investigation of the case is to assure the population that the facts will be clarified. “We cannot err by omission,” she said.

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