The Paraguayan state-owned energy company ANDE announced on Wednesday a major disruption in electricity supply that affected large parts of the country, including the capital Asunción, after several important transmission lines had gone offline.
The company said in a statement that the blackout occurred because two transmission lines that run from Itaipu Binacional, the hydroelectric plant that Paraguay shares with Brazil on the Paraná River, and that feed the national interconnected system, had gone out of service.
Later, ANDE informed that one of the lines had been energized, signaling the start of “normalization of electricity distribution in Asunción and the metropolitan area.”
The technicians were investigating possible causes and working to restore service nationwide, the statement added.
The outage occurred at a time when Paraguay is experiencing a heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 40 °C and a heat index of 43 °C, according to the Meteorology Directorate. The blackout also caused chaos in traffic in the capital, where traffic lights stopped functioning.
The state-owned drinking water company Essap said its service could be affected by the power outage.
