Power Outage in Buenos Aires Puts 30,000 in the Dark

A massive power outage in the heart of the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires leaves 30,000 residents in the dark amidst an extreme heat wave on Wednesday evening.

Power outages have long been a challenge for the Southern Cone nation, with ex-Interior Minister and former Chief of Staff, Guillermo Francos, who served under current President Javier Milei, attributing the cause to systemic under-investment combined with sudden demand spikes of the lackluster infrastructure.

Francos, who spoke of the issue in March, led the charge during the last major power outage in the nation’s capital, which knocked approximately two million (over 600,000 customers) people out of power earlier in the year.

Wednesday night’s outage left roughly 30,000 residents who reside in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires in the dark, sparking widespread criticism of private Argentine utility company, Edesur (Empresa Distribuidora Sur S.A.).

During the March outage, temperatures topped at around 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit), with this season’s temperatures nearing those levels.

Argentine governments have usually cast blame on previous administrations for large-scale energy failures, and at one point, it was even common for the state to opt to balance consumer demand by allotting scheduled power cuts to local residents.

These cuts would later become a hot-button issue during the election season, as candidates would use the topic of consumer energy as a political weapon to further their aims.

Administrations would then provide power subsidies to consumers in an effort to allay discontent. However, some governments, including President Javier Milei’s conservative populist administration, have implemented drastic cuts to consumer power subsidies recently in an effort to carry out his controversial economic reform, mandated by voters.

Private utility companies, on the other hand, have lamented under-investment and state energy policies, expressing a lack of confidence in the ability to carry out routine maintenance due to low end-user prices.