This story originally appeared on Caracas Chronicles
There is no official information. The regime only says this is an act of sabotage, and that US Senator Marco Rubio and the Venezuelan opposition are to blame for it.
From people inside the electric industry, we know that an overheat alarm was triggered between the San Geronimo B and Malena substations, which are like nodes. San Geronimo B is just South of Valle de La Pascua (Guarico state, central plains); Malena is a bit in the middle of nowhere, between Bolivar’s Trocal 19 and the Orinoco River.
From San Geronimo B substation, comes the electric load to power all the TVs, light bulbs, blenders, etc. At Malena substation end the cables that come directly from the turning water wheels of the Guri dam. If you follow the lines from Guri, the country’s main dam South of Ciudad Guayana, they go North from Guri to Malena and San Geronimo, and from there it splits into several lines going to the central region and then to the rest of the country (East and West).
This particular corridor carries three 765 kV (kilovolts) power lines, which are the largest and most important lines of the country. One of these lines, apparently the one between San Geronimo B and Malena, went out and overloaded the other two, so all three died. When all of a sudden the lines went off and power wasn’t getting through, not only all those TVs, blenders and lights went off: The water wheels started to spin out of control (in the industry we call this scenario a “load rejection”). Protections systems kicked in and the turbines shut themselves off, hopefully with no damage.
Imagine the National Electric System as a bicycle. The rear wheel is all the electric load, the pedals are the turbines, the Caroni river as the legs powering it, and the chain connecting the whole system are those 765 kV lines. On March 7th, that chain broke.
The engineers suspect that the overheat alarm was triggered by a forest fire. It is mandatory to keep vegetation trimmed under and around power lines, to avoid the risk of this kind of events. Anyone that has driven by the countryside and under these large power lines would see there’s a corridor under the lines. These corridors haven’t been maintained in years and there is a very hot summer going on. In a tropical country, this means the bushes can cover a line very fast.
No, it isn’t. The last big one took place in October 2018, due to a failure in a substation in Carabobo State. It affected 16 states and Caracas. Before that, we had another in August 2017, which affected 10 states, most of them in Western Venezuela. And another one of similar extent happened in 2015.
It is important to note that localized blackouts are a daily event everywhere in the country, but the impact of these is not as dramatic. The new thing here is that, whereas before these lasted for a couple of hours, this one lasted days.
This blackout covered most of the country’s territory and is affecting nearly all its people.
Some areas were not affected because they don’t get power from these mayor power lines, but from the 400 kV and 215 Kv lines, also coming from the Caroni facilities, or from other power plants. These areas also happen to be in local grids that Corpoelec (the electric utility company) was able to maintain isolated and safe from overloading.
There is an urgent need for huge investment in the sector, both in infrastructure and manpower: Thousands of engineers and skilled technicians have left the industry.
All the hydro turbines are in a serious state of disrepair and haven’t gone through the scheduled maintenance because that would require to turn them off, and the deficit in power generation is so big that this conventional measure would cause a serious generation shortage.
Rebuilding the system will take years. A start would be to finish all the pending projects, like Tocoma, which is years late and with no sign of being finished, and to do something about all the thermal generation the country paid for but never got.
Hyperinflation affects the operational capacity of these institutions too. There are many things that need to fall in place so problems like this see a solution.
