Power systems across the globe suffer from blackouts at times, which tend
to become recurrent phenomena. The incident is triggered by an initiating
disturbance, which causes cascading events, leading to blackouts. Learning and
analyzing blackouts in the real world can play a very important role in avoiding
such events. In this paper, the experience of Indonesia's Southeast Sumatra
blackout on July 23, 2018 is studied and presented. The blackout is reproduced
and simulated, then validated with actual data. The root cause of the blackout is
analyzed. Finally, corrective actions such as PSS design with tuned parameters
and transmission system operation in meshed configuration are modeled and
simulated, which yield satisfactory results in preventing similar blackouts in the
future.