Venezuela's power outage, no solution in sight – 11/03/2019

PASCUA VALLEY, Venezuela – Sporadic looting and spontaneous manifestations. Desperate patients begging doctors to keep them alive. Neighbors gather to conduct wider attacks in markets and restaurants after sunset.

Sunday was the fourth day of the collapse of the Venezuelan electrical system, plunging most of the country, including Caracas, the capital, into sporadic darkness. there is still no hope for a future solution for devastating power failure this has brought the country to the limit of social implosion.

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Monday to Friday afternoon.

"We will arrive at the moment we are going to eat ourselves"Said Zuly González, 40, living in the Chacao district of Caracas.

The breakdown is the most recent calamity from a country that seems to be caught in a perpetual crisis. Venezuela was devastated by years of hyperinflation and a failed economy that led to the flight of millions of Venezuelans. However, the country was beaten even more in January when opposition leaders refused to recognize President Nicolás Maduro's re-election as legitimate.

Thursday, the substation San Gerónimo B located in the center of the country, which provides electricity to 4 out of 5 Venezuelans from the gigantic dam Guri, is extinct. There is no set date to restart the factoryand most workers were asked to stay home on Monday, according to two substation employees and a director of the company's national monopoly of electricity, Corpoelec. Their names are not published to protect them from government reprisals.

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San Geronimo A substation, which strengthens a much lower current of a smaller hydroelectric plant, He operated intermittently on Sunday. Thanks to the energy provided by this plant and by other unreliable thermoelectric power plants, the government was able to send electricity sporadically to Caracas throughout the day.

The government stated that the failure was caused by an unspecified fault to Guri, which provides 80 percent of the country's electricity. Maduro and his ministers insisted that the blackout was the result of sabotage and cyber-attacks organized by the United States and the opposition, without offering any kind of proof.

Energy experts, energy sector contractors from Venezuela, employees and former employees of Corpoelec rejected the sabotage charges, saying the blackout was the result of years of low investment, corruption and leakage brains.

The San Gerónimo B substation connects many of Venezuela's largest cities to the Guri hydroelectric power plant, via the longest high voltage cables in the world.

During his visit on Sunday, the usual buzzing of the substation's high voltage currents had been replaced by complete silence. A cow wandered among the processors. There were many soldiers of the National Guard and a police command unit, but no employee.

The substation is essential "to provide the country with electricity in a stable manner," says Luis Aguilar, expert of the energy sector in Venezuela, who lives in Chicago. The paralysis of this substation implies that a restoration of energy in the country is unlikely before Tuesdaylike very early, he says.

The government said Monday would be a school and administrative holiday.

What happened

The cause of the breakdown is still a subject of debate. Ali Briceño, union leader of Corpoelec, told reporters Friday that a fire in an electrical container had destabilized the network and caused the shutdown of Gurí turbines. The government has been trying to restart the turbines since then, he said.

Other experts, including Aguilar, say that the scale of the breakdown indicates that the problem was caused by a major defect in Guri turbines. A Corpoelec official said the factory managers told him Thursday that the plant's equipment was down. damaged.

After reviewing electricity levels across the country, Aguilar, a consultant for Venezuela's energy insurance companies, says the government tried to restart Guri four times since the blackout started on Thursday.

The last attempt leads to the explosion of a substation secondary near Guri Saturday.

"Whenever they try to restart it, they fail and the disruption breaks something else in the system, further destabilizing the network," says Aguilar. "Obviously, they hide something"He says, referring to the government.

The restart of the turbines requires operators able to synchronize the speed of rotation in the nine Guri operational turbines. Experts say that the most experienced operators they left the company for low wages and for the paranoia atmosphere that feeds Maduro's ever-present secret police.

By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera

© The New York Times