Black out! Massive electrical outage sweeps across Argentina, Uruguay: Power companies

A massive outage blacked out Argentina and Uruguay on Sunday, leaving both South American countries without electricity, power companies said. Uruguay's system went down at 7:06 am (1006 GMT), according to the Uruguayan power company UTE, which attributed the outage to "a fault in the Argentine network."               

Two Argentine power companies confirmed the failure knocked out electricity throughout Argentina, without specifying the cause. "A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all Argentina and Uruguay without power," Edesur Argentina said on Twitter.

Una falla masiva en el sistema de interconexión eléctrica dejó sin energía a toda la Argentina y Uruguay. Ampliaremos con más información. #SinLuz #CortedeLuz

— Edesur Argentina (@OficialEdesur) June 16, 2019

Edenor, Argentina's largest electricity distributor, attributed the outage to a "general failure in the interconnection system."

UTE said the failure left Uruguay's "entire national territory without service, as well as several provinces of the neighbour country."

More than an hour after the blackout, UTE said its system was being brought back "from zero."  "Some coastal cities already have service and work continues toward general restoration (of power)," it said.

(With AFP inputs)