Publish in Perspectives - Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Between 1998 and 2013, with financial resources of at least $58 billion dollars, the Venezuelan electrical system showed the worst measures of management in all of America. (Photo: Corp. Electrica Nacional)
Government mismanagement, not sabotage, caused Venezuela's
massive blackout, experts say.
BY ENERGY
ADVISOR
Inter-American Dialogue
Blackouts in Venezuela on Sept. 3 left nearly
70 percent of the country without electricity, including many parts of Caracas,
and caused major transportation disruptions. President Nicolás Maduro blamed
the outage on sabotage by political opponents and quickly announced the
creation of a security force to defend the country's electrical system, but
others have blamed the outage on a lack of investment in infrastructure. What
was behind Venezuela's latest power system breakdown? Will the blackout push
the government to invest more in power infrastructure? What factors have
prevented Venezuela from addressing its longstanding electricity problems, and
what changes are most needed to ensure more reliable electricity service?
Iñaki Rousse, former vice president of
Electricidad de Caracas and international consultant on electricity: The
Venezuelan electrical system attained major support between 1950 and 1998 for
moving from rural and isolated Venezuela to urban and integrated Venezuela, and
thus the country as a whole, with limited resources (approximately $50 billion
at 1998 prices), built the most sound and technologically advanced electrical
system in Latin America. Service in most regions was comparable to
industrialized countries and covered some 96 percent of the population. All of
this was possible thanks to a professional management, respectful of the
criteria of planning, engineering design, quality of construction and
maintenance. Between 1998 and 2013, with financial resources of at least $58
billion dollars at 1998 prices, the Venezuelan electrical system showed the
worst measures of management in all of America. The chain of production
(generation-transmission-distribution) until 1998 was designed based on the
standard of firm capacity, meaning that a single isolated failure of an
installation would not affect service. Beginning in 1998, the substitution of
planning by improvisation, the deprofessionalization of the sector, the use of
unskilled foreign engineering and the neglect of maintenance policies have left
the system unable to respond to a simple failure without affecting service. The
765 kV network is made up of three independent lines that feed the 400 and 230
kV systems. This system was designed so that in the event of the unavailability
of one circuit, the other two could transport 100 percent of the demand, and in
case of a second simultaneous event, the available line could bear 50 percent.
Based on the almost nonexistent technical information from the authorities,
what happened was the failure of one of the lines that leaves the San Gerónimo
substation. If the national system had been operating under the operational
safety limits, without overloading the 765 kV network, and if it had completed
maintenance programs on the lines and associated substations, the system should
have worked, isolating the failure. The power flow should have adjusted to the
available facilities without affecting service. The talk of sabotage is only a
pretext for hiding the state of deterioration of the Venezuelan electrical
system.
Dan Hellinger, professor of political
science at Webster University in St. Louis: The widespread electrical
blackout is bad news politically for the Chavista government. While raising the
specter of sabotage, President Maduro himself admits that systemic problems
contributed to the outage. 'We must consolidate the balance between generation
and consumption, focusing efforts on system security against calculated
sabotage,' he tweeted. The widespread nature of the blackout was due neither to
sabotage nor poor maintenance but rather to the design of the grid. The problem
affected a portion of the grid where 50 percent of the country's electricity
passes. Infrastructure problems and overconsumption, combined with prolonged
drought, produced severe electrical outages in 2009, prompting the government
to launch efforts to upgrade transmission equipment and create more public
consciousness about energy conservation. Despite perceptions of profligate
electricity use, Venezuelan consumption of kilowatts per capita, according to
World Bank data, is approximately the same as Chile's. With a government
desperate to recover popularity, and an opposition determined to blame every
malady on the ruling party, reactions are predictable. The incendiary charges
of electoral fraud, with limited evidence, that Henrique Capriles launched
after the April election, have ratcheted up political tensions and encouraged
the extremist sectors in the opposition. The opposition claims an explosion
that killed 40 people at the Amuay refinery in 2012 was due to poor
maintenance; the government says a suspicious quick release of gas points
toward sabotage. Sabotage of the electrical grid would not require a bomb; a
computer virus would do the trick. Sorting truth from fiction in polarized
Venezuela is difficult.
José Aguilar, Chicago-based
international electrical systems consultant: Both the Venezuelan government
and some critics are wrong in their responses to the nation's largest-ever
blackout, which occurred on Sept. 3. The government's response, their 'standard
excuse' of sabotage by the political opposition, is simply preposterous.
Likewise, to cite a lack of investment is irresponsible. Since 1999, $85
billion (in 1998 U.S. dollars) has been allocated toward the grid's
infrastructure, mainly for power generation. This large expenditure has been
plagued by mismanagement, cost overruns, corruption, delays and lack of a
proactive maintenance culture, which translates into dismal availability for
the thermal generating fleet of 60 percent. This is not a formula for success.
The root cause is that the government's induced policies are stifling energy
for the country's industrial and commercial base, both private and state-run
companies. The crisis is induced because the present government of Venezuela
received almost 20,000 MW of installed capacity in 1999, with a reserve
operating margin of close to 4,000 MW. By 2012, this margin had evaporated and
turned into a nearly 3,000 MW deficit, even though the government received all
the plans and technical road maps to proceed and maintain the electrical
service. The government also cancelled 12,000 MW worth of hydropower works and
went thermoelectric without building the required supportive infrastructure.
The country guarantees no-bid contracts by decree, which continues to drain the
country's oil revenues. To solve Venezuela's energy crisis, the country must go
through a regime change, since it is incapable of rectification, coupled with
transparency, hard work and ethics. Venezuelan citizens are called wasteful
users by the government, yet users are completely defenseless. The 2010 electrical
law prohibits access to the grid information, which the government has hidden
since Nov. 16, 2010. This aberrant law could send someone to prison for up to
16 years. By contrast, a rapist would only go to jail for 14 years. When this
law is abolished, the ugly truth will come to light.
Republished with permission from the Inter-American Dialogue's weekly Energy Advisor