Electricity returns to Chile after major blackout

• 10 months ago (2025-02-27)
• David Flin

Distribution 150 Latin America 96 Transmission 227

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Power has been restored to most of Chile after the country’s most disruptive power blackout in 15 years.

Carolina Tohá, Chile’s Interior Minister, said electricity had largely been restored to the nation’s 14 afflicted regions, although 220 000 people remained without power at the time of speaking. Restoration of power in the north of the country has proven harder than elsewhere.

A fault in a backbone transmission line in the north of the country triggered an outage that set off a chain reaction of power plant and transmission line shut-downs. The cause of the initial fault is still being investigated.

The state-owned copper company Codelco , the world's largest copper producer, said it was resuming operations at its mines as the power supply returned. Chile produces roughly a quarter of the world’s copper.