A massive blackout struck a large portion of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the conurbano on a Saturday night, leaving nearly 600,000 households and businesses without electricity at its peak. According to data from the ENRE, the widespread disruption affected the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), with the northern zone bearing a particularly heavy impact.
Massive Blackout Strikes Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area
The electrical failure began shortly after 8 p.m. and quickly spread across multiple neighborhoods and municipalities. In the capital city, areas left in the dark included Palermo, Belgrano, Recoleta, Villa Urquiza, Núñez, Coghlan, Colegiales, Chacarita, and Saavedra. Across the provincial side, outages multiplied in Vicente López, San Isidro, Villa Ballester, and San Fernando.
Regulatory Peaks and Utility Disconnections
Official records from the regulatory body revealed that the peak of the blackout involved 519,472 users under Edenor without service, alongside another 78,125 customers belonging to Edesur. Electrical sector sources noted that the incident was reportedly exacerbated by a failure in a circuit breaker at the Malaver substation located in the partido of San Martín, which had been out of service for maintenance work. That situation forced maneuver operations on a 220-kilovolt high-tension line to recover power.
Although the initial problem reportedly originated in installations linked to Edenor, the disruption also breached Edesur’s network. Edesur issued a statement indicating that the interruption was due to a failure in the system outside the company, explaining that an external fault affected a portion of its system and triggered the shutdown of service for tens of thousands of users. Edenor lost approximately 11% of its electrical demand during the incident, though the company did not provide a detailed public explanation regarding the origin of the malfunction as the evening progressed.
Immediate Impacts on Traffic and Daily Life
The blackout generated immediate consequences on public thoroughfares, knocking out traffic lights and street lighting throughout the city. A notable point of disruption occurred along Avenida Figueroa Alcorta near the MALBA, where buildings went dark and vehicles were forced to navigate unlit intersections. This absence of working traffic signals produced horns, delays, and hazardous conditions for pedestrians in an area hosting evening public activities, while museums and establishments with generators maintained limited lighting.
Residents flooded social media platforms with images of darkened neighborhoods and complaints regarding the lack of initial information during what became one of the most extensive electrical failures recorded in the metropolitan area in recent times. Some users reported briefly regaining service only to suffer renewed interruptions.
Rapid Service Restoration
Power recovery operations began at a fast pace following 9:30 p.m. Although more than half a million Edenor users remained affected shortly before 10 p.m., that count dropped to just over 24,000 minutes later and continued to fall steeply. By 11 p.m., Edenor’s electricity supply was logged as normalized, while Edesur’s affected user count fell below one thousand as grid operations stabilized across the region.
