Power Outage Chile

By ThinkReliability Staff

A power outage struck Chile less than a month after an earthquake struck.  The power outage affected an area of nearly 2,000 kilometers and roughly 80% of Chile’s population.  Power in most areas was restored within several areas.  However, it was estimated that power to some in the Bio Bio region – which received more severe infrastructure damage – might be out for the better part of a week.

A power outage is an impact to the customer service and production/schedule goal.  The power outage was caused by the collapse of the Central Interconnected System (Sistema Interconectado Central).  The grid collapse was due to a lack of backup power capabilities, which was caused by a fragile power grid as a result of the earthquake, and interruption to the main power grid.  This interruption was caused by a disruption at the biggest substation due to a damaged transformer.  It’s unclear what caused the damage to the transformer, but it is believed to be related to the earthquake that hit in February.  We show this by adding a cause box with a question mark between “damaged transformer” and “earthquake on Feb. 27th”.

Repairs to the damaged transformer were required, which is an impact to the property and labor goals.

The Chilean government pledged to repair the transformer within 48 hours and stabilize the transmission lines within a week.  Interim solutions to get the electricity flowing were to isolate the damaged unit and install a reserve.  Additionally, Chileans have been asked to conserve electricity to minimize the amount of power transmitted through the lines.

By clicking ‘Download PDF” above, you can see the thorough root cause analysis built as a Cause Map that captures all of the currently known information in a simple, intuitive format that fits on one page.

Even more detail can be added to this Cause Map as the analysis continues. As with any investigation the level of detail in the analysis is based on the impact of the incident on the organization’s overall goals.