On Thursday, a widespread blackout hit the city of Rosario and the south of Santa Fe province as the ongoing nationwide heat wave tested the national energy system.

“As a result of the failure in three transformers of the national system, belonging to the Transener company, part of the city of Rosario and localities of the south of the province are without service,” said provincial energy company EPE on X.

Outages were also reported in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), peaking at 71,800 homes on Wednesday evening after a fire in a medium voltage cable tunnel in Parque Avellaneda. The number was down to 14,000 at 11:30 a.m. Thursday morning, but national energy regulator ENRE warned that more power cuts could occur as temperatures surge closer to 40°C.

“We’re paying close attention to what’s happening, we don’t know the causes of the fire yet, but in 13 hours, almost 80% of users got their electricity back, so we’re doing really well,” a spokesperson for the Energy Secretariat told the Herald. “Although we’re seeing high temperatures, demand has been lower than expected over the past few days.”

Experts contend that the main issue with the national grid isn’t energy generation but distribution. Although progress has been made in terms of improvements in recent years, high demand could saturate the system.

The electricity management company Cammesa had predicted that Thursday, the hottest day of the week, could break the 29,653-megawatt record for energy consumption. However, the spokesperson highlighted that this week’s data showed that actual energy consumption was consistently lower than the predicted consumption values.

The electricity outages have affected the water supply in both cities.

How much energy does Argentina have for 2025?

The total installed power of the national grid is 43,148 megawatts, although currently, only about 28,000 megawatts are available, with more than 2,000 megawatts of additional reserve imports.

“We’re importing a good amount of energy from Brazil and other neighboring countries. With that, plus our own generating capacity, we think it’s going to be enough,” said the Energy Secretariat spokesperson. 

Currently, the system is supplied with energy from different generation sources: 56% thermal, 16% hydroelectric, 16% renewable, 7% imports, and 5% nuclear.

Cammesa’s mid-year 2024 report, which sounded the alarm for possible power cuts, warned that energy consumption could reach 30,700 megawatts, i.e., more than 1,000 megawatts above February 2024 record. Argentina would need 2,500 additional megawatts to cater to that demand.

With reporting by Ambito Energy Report