EN 
PT_BR 
O Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, he said what one third of Brazilian consumers were affected by the blackout which left several regions of the country without access to electricity this Tuesday (15).
In a press conference held at the headquarters of the MME (Ministry of Mines and Energy), in Brasília (DF), the executive said that the problem was caused by “two concomitant events on transmission lines high capacity”.
One of them was located in State of Ceará, while the second has not yet been identified by the ONS (National Electric System Operator).
“There was an overload in Ceará, which caused the system to collapse in the region, with an abrupt loss of load. The ONS reacted, modulated the load to the South and Southeast and reduced the load to protect the system”, stated Silveira.
O minister also said that what happened has nothing to do with Brazil's energy supply and energy security and said that the electrical power was restored systemwide at 2:29 p.m., shortly more than six hours after the start of the blackout (at 8:29 am).
Silveira also said that the case is “extremely rare” to happen. “For an event of this magnitude to happen, we must have had two simultaneous events, on high-capacity transmission lines. In other words, it is extremely rare for what happened in today’s episode to happen,” he said.
O minister of Mines and Energy also stated that he will ask the PF (Federal Police) and Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) investigating the causes of the blackout. “We will direct both the Federal Police and Abin to initiate procedures to investigate possible fraud in these incidents today”, he commented.
“I am absolutely convinced that the ONS, even due to its technical nature, will not be able to say verbatim whether these events were eminently technical, or whether there was also human error or even fraud”, explained Silveira.
