Entire Country Of Columbia Loses Power.

Entire Country Of Columbia Loses Power.

www.cnn.com

A nationwide blackout hit Colombia on Thursday, with authorities struggling to determine the cause of the electrical grid's collapse.

President Alvaro Uribe told journalists in the southern city of Cali that authorities would "know in a few minutes" the cause of the blackout, which took place at about 10:15 a.m. local time.

He said the blackout "appears to have affected the entire country."

(visit the link for the full news article)

An entire country losing power? The entire grid collapsed?
Is this some sort of a test on grids?

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I find it hard to believe that an entire Grid could fail accidentally.

Surely there are safeguards in place to prevent a total collapse and instead just have one section fall over?

There should also be redundancies in place in case of critical components going belly up.

very odd...

I agree with you. It is more than odd. An entire country, without some sort of a natural disaster like weather or earthquakes. It doesn't seem to add up to me.

Problems can cascade quickly on a grid. Generators will trip offline if conditions get to the point that damage will occur. Not a normal situation but not that a big of improbability. I can only imagine the condition of parts of their grid.

Bah, pales in comparison to the NE Blackout we had a few years back. I'm just surprised this doesn't happen more often in 3rd world unstable countries.

[edit on 26-4-2007 by sardion2000]

Any reports of looting or anything in that category? Has this been fixed already by the way?

Regards,
Maestro

I dont think it is odd for power to collapse so fast in a country that is mostly rainforest and undeveloped. Of course their coc aine factories probably still have back ups..lol

Yeah, I'm skeptical. FARC, ELN, and other narcoterrorist groups do not recognize the government and control huge chunks of the country. As a result, they are self-sufficient. I find it hard to believe the government would have any knowledge as to whether or not all of these groups experienced a blackout. Also, sabotage by one of these groups is the most likely cause, I think.
Nevertheless, I bet most of them run off of relatively small-scale generators that are not connected to the main system so a grid-wide failure can't be ruled out.

[edit on 26-4-2007 by uberarcanist]

That is odd, and really not something you think about happening in the
modern world.

Anyways though, it's hardly impossible to be accidental.

I mean just look at the (as Sardion mentioned) North-Eastern blackout in
North America a few years back, a significant section of the North-Eastern
United States and South-Eastern Canada lost power.

Now consider that Columbia is Columbia is actually about the same zie,
prolly a bit bigger, and that it hardly has the most advanced energy
infrastructure system in the world, and it's not that hard to imagine that
a regional accident lead to this.