Venezuela's information minister has said that
a huge power outage that has left most of the country dark for a week has been completely restored. The power failure left many homes without running water and caused chaos in hospitals, as well as disrupting places of work and schools. At its worst, 19 of 23 states were affected, and the capital Caracas was blanketed by darkness. Speaking at a press conference, Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said that school activities remain suspended for another 24 hours. He urged people to unplug appliances and turn off lights.
According to anecdotal reports, power has been restored in many parts of Caracas, but not everywhere. A doctor from the non-profit organization Medicos por la Salud said that many hospitals across Venezuela were still experiencing intermittent power outages throughout the day. Hospitals in Valencia, Merida, and Maracaibo all reported hours-long outages, and are either relying on generators or transferring their patients to hospitals in neighboring towns. The minister said 80% of country and 70% of Caracas now has drinking water.
As the country recovers from the outage, one persistent question looms large:
How could a country with the world's largest proven oil reserves go dark?
The answer involves poor decision-making, rampant corruption, and the steady flight of electrical engineers, according to experts, though the government blames sabotage.
Venezuela's power grid relies heavily on the Guri Dam, a giant hydroelectric power station that was inaugurated in the late 1960s. While the engineers who planned Venezuela's current power grid imagined the Guri Dam would supply about 60 percent of the country's electricity, today it is believed to supply a whopping 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent comes predominately from thermoelectric power stations.
How much power Guri can actually supply and the level of Venezuela's current demand are not fully known because officials have not released that data in years. Some engineers speculate Venezuela has even less supply than it did 20 years ago largely as a result of poor maintenance of existing plants.
Critics say the Guri Dam on the Caroni River basin has long needed updates and become vulnerable during periods of drought. The late President Hugo Chavez tried to remedy the country's over-reliance on hydroelectric power with what he called an "electricity revolution." Venezuela spent billions of dollars on new thermoelectric plants that in theory should be able to power the nation even without the Guri Dam, but they either were not built or were poorly maintained.
Military generals were put in charge of running Venezuela's power grid and qualified engineers — like many other professionals — began to leave the country.
Chavez's successor, President Nicolas Maduro has responded to shortages by urging Venezuelans to use less power by reducing the work week, and at one point even urged women to ration their use of hair dryers. Maduro has blamed the blackout on a cyberattack on the plant's all-important electronic monitoring system, though engineers who have worked on the dam say they don't believe that.
One theory is that a fire knocked down one of the three huge 765-kilovolt lines that connect the Guri Dam to Caracas. The regional electrical company that operated the dam decades ago had a fleet of helicopters that monitored the region for fires, but current workers say that quick-response system is no longer in place. One worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said there has been a lack of routine maintenance, such as cutting down brush to keep it at a distance from the lines. Though the three lines are spaced a considerable distance apart, Jose Aguilar, a Venezuelan energy expert who now resides in the United States, said a fire at just one of those could cause an outage affecting all of them.
Other theories include a breakdown in the electronic monitoring system that controls power distribution, a turbine going offline or a failure elsewhere. "We don't know yet what happened because they're hiding it," Aguilar said.
Three engineers consulted by The Associated Press with direct knowledge of the Guri's operating systems say it is almost impossible that it could have been the victim of a cyberattack. They explain that the computers that operate the monitoring system are not connected to the internet and can only communicate with each other, making them immune to an outside attack. Anurag Srivastava, an engineering professor at Washington State University, said the only way to carry out a cyberattack in a closed system would be through physical access to the substation where the system is located.
Venezuelan authorities haven't provided proof of a cyberattack, but have pointed fingers at those they say are involved. On the night of the outage, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted about the outage minutes after it began, and Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez suggested he may have known about it in advance.
Miguel Lara, a former general manager for the independent Venezuelan agency that collected data on electricity usage, said that problems restoring full power could drag on for weeks. The worst-case scenario, he said, is an extended phase of restoration where power is restored in one place but then goes off hours later, or is restored in one city while another stays dark.
In the process of restoring the system, there have been multiple fires, including one at what was previously the country's largest transformer. Srivastava said fires at substations and transformers indicate engineers are using electrical loads higher than the equipment's rated capacity. Some engineers like Aguilar say that could point to a lack of expertise in how to put the system back together.
The country's heavy reliance on the Guri Dam could also complicate efforts, Srivastava said, because restoration depends on having access to multiple power sources. Dependence on one major power source is likely to slow down the recovery. Soldiers are continuing to block access to the Guri Dam and adjacent power stations.
