Weekly Report - 26 November 2020 (WR-20-47)

When Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro visited Amapá on 21 November, most of this small northern state had been without a regular power supply for almost three weeks, after a fire in an electricity substation destroyed two generators on 3 November and caused a four-day blackout. The state’s electricity distributor, the Companhia de Electricidade de Amapá (CEA), and the federal mines & energy ministry (MME) finally announced that 100% of the power supply had been restored on 24 November. But many questions remain unanswered about the causes of the power failure and the weaknesses in Brazil’s electricity system as a whole.