The 2025 Chile Blackout

On the afternoon of Tuesday 25 February 2025, a 500 kV line between Nueva Maitencillo and Nueva Pan de Azúcar in northern Chile disconnected at 15:15:40, and the failure cascaded through the national grid, cutting power to customers from Arica in the far north to the Los Lagos region in the south.

Chile's grid operator, the Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional, said in its report that staff of the line's owner, ISA InterChile, had been trying to restore communications in the line's protection system from 15:13, and that an unexpected protection action followed at 15:15:41. It said that work was carried out without informing the control centre and without the required work permit. ISA InterChile was investigating the failure of the communications module with the equipment manufacturer.

The sequence of events is documented, but the root cause of the equipment failure was still being investigated when that report was published, and a separate expert report commissioned by the grid operator spread responsibility across several companies, the regulator and the operator itself, including at least 11 generating units that disconnected early without technical justification. This page therefore treats responsibility as contested rather than settled.