Electricity cuts

Hi soie5,

The infrastructure all over Brazil is very old and there's been precious little investment over the decades to keep it up. Electric outages are commonplace in all Brazilian cities, however they rareley last very long (just a matter of hours). I don't recall seeing anything regarding being without electricity for a couple of days during my eleven years in Brazil, except as a result of flooding or some other natural disaster and which effected a small area. Recently there have also been some major blackouts that have effected several states at the same time. Typically, these have resulted from electrical storms or overloading the main transmission lines, again these have been resolved in a matter of hours as well. This sort of thing althought rare in developed countries does happen. I can remember a major blackout that left all of eastern Canada and the eastern United States in total darkness for many hours when I was much younger.

In São Paulo, you will probably find the power goes off maybe once a week, generally after it begins to rain and is restored within an hour or so. Water is actually less reliable than electricity. The water mains in the street run dry and of course you don't find out until your water tank (caixa de água) runs out. If you're talking about infrastructure, then Brazil really hasn't yet moved away from being a 'third world country' as we've done in terms of the economy and GDP.

Cheers,
William James Woodward = Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Thank u for your reply. How often do these 'couple of hours' power shortage happen like,  maybe in a week? Or r they only when something happens.