Wikileaks on the 2009 Brazil blackout

[exciting]

Just found this browsing the 'cablegate' site of wikileaks, about the 2009 Brazil blackout:

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/12/09BRASILIA1383.html

Maybe there's not much news for those who followed this closely and there's some small technical errors ('50 Hz of DC power'), but I found it an interesting read.

There's also this gem:

There was also private speculation in at least one conversation among some government officials, apparently based in part of the coincidental "60 Minutes program" just days earlier suggesting vulnerabilities in the Brazilian system, that U.S. private sector interests may have engineered the blackouts to gain better commercial access to the grid.

 

[m3ntosan]

Half of the generators are functioning at 60 Hz and half at 50 Hz, since Paraguay demand is lower, some of the 50 Hz generators output is used by Brazil using DC to outcome the frequency difference issue. Maybe that’s what they’re trying to say.

May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true...

 

[rasevskii]

The 50Hz side of Itaipu is also connected to the grids in Argentina and Uruguay which have that frequency. The DC link is in fact in Itaipu itself which connects the two differing frequency systems.

Brazil has had only 60Hz for some decades, the former 50Hz systems in Rio, as well as Porto Alegre were converted to 60Hz already in the early 1970s or late 1960s. Sao Paulo had 60Hz from the beginning as the system there was built by a Canadian company.

rasevskii

 

[rasevskii]

What I just wrote was not completely correct. There is also a DC link of 600 kV between Itaipu and Sao Paulo, built at a later time from the original project, it would appear. The DC link at Itaipu itself is for the frequency interconnection.

rasevskii