State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most of Chile into darkness

Broadly speaking, electrical grids are the largest machines in the world and are held together by systems to keep everything in harmony at a target frequency (enormous spinning mass that slows when load is added, and has to spin back up, failsafes that have to decouple parts of the grid when maintaining voltage and frequency becomes impossible with committed capacity, etc). It’s actually wild it works flawlessly most of the time and is a testament to robust systems keeping them operational. There’s always room for improvement between here and some nebulous point of diminishing returns. That cost/resiliency discovery process is constant.

In this case, there is room for improvement, at some cost to be determined from a post mortem.

In general failures like this aren't so much because of a single point of failure but because they trigger cascading failures across the network.

One piece of infrastructure trips offline, causing an abnormal situation at another, which then trips etc.

Electricity infrastructure is incredibly expensive. If a main transmission line goes down you will have issues both sides of it, one side experiencing sudden increased supply which will raise the frequency which will cause power plants to trip offline.

On the other side you will see frequency drops, which will do the same.

I do not know what Chiles power production looks like, but it would be a huge challenge for any power network to deal with one of the main lines suddenly dropping out.

It's likely not a single fault, but a fault and a subsequently failed protection mechanism. Elements of a grid usually work together, tied through frequency synchronisation with protection breakers to separate them if a part gets overloaded or fails. If a required generator or transmissions like did go down, and it and its users remained connected to the national grid, that load can very easily pull the rest down.

Many modern countries have experienced rolling black- and brown-outs in the past ~25 years. It's not an easy thing to sidestep without a lot of spare capacity and that takes money that nobody has the appetite to spend.

Are you old enough to remember the great northeast blackout of 2003? A single software bug brought the whole grid down for 55 million people and we didn't have power fully restored here in southern Ontario until 3 days later.

It was nice to see the stars though.

Well, no country-wide black outs so far.

Getting fuel for your generator might be a challenge. Petrol stations tend to require electricity to operate their pumps.

A less reactive and better long term plan would be investing in tech that simultaneously reduces your monthly electricity bills and makes you more resilient against grid failures: solar + battery. It's not a solution in the middle of a black out. But a great one for dealing with the next one.

I have no idea how reliable the grid in Chile is. But even the southern tip is at -52 degrees latitude, which means their winters are about as dark as at +52 latitude, like Berlin, Germany where I live where solar power is very popular Anything in between (most of the US, except Alaska) gets enough sun hours to make solar panels a very useful fallback (with seasonal limitations obviously); and you can also keep your batteries topped up with grid power too using e.g. cheap off-peak power.

A cheaper alternative could be to pick up a few portable batteries and solar panels from Amazon. You can get a nice plug and play setup that will power some essential things for a while for a few thousand dollar/euro. Running the AC off such a setup is not going to be a thing. But you could run a small fridge for a half a day or so, keep phones laptops charged, and keep the lights on. Some people buy generators just so they can top up their batteries when solar falls short and run completely off-grid otherwise.

This seems pretty wasteful. Going without electricity for a day really isn't such a burden and a freezer can last pretty long or if it doesn't there's rarely much of a problem with waste if you just eat the food in order.

Or a lot of impromptu parties...

Get an EV instead. Use it for bi-directional charging, buy PV to reduce your dependency and energy bill and a heat pump to be independent of oil/gas companies.

Feed it to chickens and hogs!

From the article:

Trump Team Looks to Drastically Cut Weather and Climate Agency https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-team-looks-...

Trump officials signal potential changes at NOAA, the weather and climate agency https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5297183/noaa-national-w...

Sigh...

Chilean here. The curfew was very reasonable due to the scale of the outage initially affecting the ~99.0% of homes, and its the purpose was just to reduce circulation due to restricted policing capacity and the inherent danger of big cities such as Santiago being completely out of energy and artificial light at night.

Plus, both natural persons and enterprises could ask for curfew passes via a website (Comisaria Virtual) created during the COVID-era for doing police paperwork online. Military/police staff were especially understanding and people who didn't have a pass when checked were allowed to get one on-site using their smartphones.

It was as soft as a curfew can get. I didn't see any important backlash on social networks if that says anything to you.

On a scale from 0 to Augusto Pinochet bringing American "Freedom" to the people or his next door neighbor, Videla, throwing dissidents out of airplanes, the current government declaring a curfew during darkness is about a 0.

Luckily, I flew out of Chile on Saturday. Although it felt like it was the safest place I have visited in South America so far the empty white powdered dime bags on the sidewalk, people telling me to be very careful walking alone at night, razor wire and electrified fences around properties was a reminder of how dangerous it is.

I think this is the pertinent section?

> Authorities also announced a curfew in effect from 10 p.m. Tuesday until 6 a.m. Wednesday.

Personally I could understand that both policing and emergency response with no light at night might just become impossible. All the streetlights are presumably out, making walking difficult. If all of the traffic lights are also not working at night, it seems extremely dangerous. And any criminal would be camouflaged by all of the chaos. Much simpler to police the very act of being outside.

I agree it's not ideal, but I wouldn't thin end of the wedge it.

This is common standard procedure during region-wide emergencies. Everyone sees it as reasonable as far as I know due to crime being common during emergencies. We are at an all time high perception of crime. I myself have been victim of two car hijacks this year, and know plenty of victims in my already small social circle. If my only loss of freedom is going out during the night (you still can do it for short trips by filling a form), I think it’s worth it.

If there were ever reason for a curfew, this seems to be a textbook example of when it is warranted.

Even ignoring crime, a curfew probably helps the health care and firefighting sectors significantly. I can easily imagine my friend group using a blackout as an excuse for a drunken bonfire.

> A government declaring a curfew (for any reason) is a bad thing, IMO,

As I see it, in a well running society there is enough trust to give everyone flexibility in the short term. If everyone assumes worst intentions and outcomes then your society is effectively no longer functioning. At which point a curfew is the least of your worries.

This is executive powers as it was intended, though, and not a power grab.