LatinNews Daily - 17 August 2023

* Brazil’s minister of energy & mines, Alexandre Silveira, has called a meeting of the government’s electricity sector monitoring committee (CMSE) in response to the power outages which affected the capital region ('Distrito Federal') and cities in 25 out of Brazil’s 26 states on 15 August. Roraima was the only state not to be affected. At the CMSE meeting, authorities reported the initial findings from the official investigations into the cause of the blackouts. According to early reports from the national energy grid operator (ONS), the technical fault appears to have begun in the north-eastern state of Ceará, in the Quixadá/Fortaleza II line, operated by Companhia Hidroelétrica do São Franscisco (CHESF), a subsidiary of the formerly state-owned electricity supplier Eletrobras. The error spread throughout the national grid and caused mass power outages for around six hours, disrupting infrastructure all over the country, from water supply systems in the north-eastern Piauí state to the metro system of São Paulo city in the south-east. Authorities will continue their investigations into the root cause and spread of the technical fault. Silveira said that the federal police (PF) and national intelligence agency (Abin) will also be involved in the investigations.