translated from Spanish: SEC investigates power outage that affected about a million customers in 10 regions

The Superintendency of electricity and fuels, SEC, INI Ció an investigation to determine the causes and eventual liabilities following the power outage recorded on Monday afternoon, affecting approximately one million customers in 10 regions of the country.
The supervisory body, once it became aware of the fact, requested both the various electric companies operating in the country, as well as the National Electrical Coordinator, the first antecedents with the objective of investigating the origin of this emergency.
According to preliminary data, the failure would have been recorded for causes that are being investigated by the SEC, at 15:47 hours, in the transmission line 2×220 KV Quillota – Polpaico. At 15:58 hours, 11 minutes after the emergency was informed, the transmission line was indicated again was in a position to operate, now the electric distribution companies are in charge of normalizing the supply in the different cities Affected.
The Superintendent of the SEC, Luis Avila Bravo, said that “once detected the situation, we started the monitoring for the service to be spared soon in the affected regions, understanding the discomfort that this situation has generated in the citizenry. In parallel, we request the first antecedents to verify if there is any normative breaches. ”
The Ombudsman also stated that “together with analyzing the performance of electrical companies during the emergency, which could be translated into eventual penalties if it is verified that they did not respond according to the provisions of the legislation, are studying the Background to determine, if applicable, the payment of compensation to users affected by this situation. ”
Finally, since the SEC reminded users that if you register a light outage or stay without power, the claim can be made from any cell phone entering www.sec.cl from the browser and selecting the option “claim or Denunciation for electricity. ”
Meanwhile, from Enel reported that a failure in generation, foreign to the distribution system, caused that “the company ceased to receive energy from the national electrical system, between 15:47 and 16:01 hours, which affected about 625,000 customers of Enel distribution , which are already recovered. ”

Original source in Spanish