Some thoughts on the Venezuelan electric and public services crisis.

It’s pretty well known almost everywhere that in Venezuela we are facing major issues with our electrical system. I keep in touch with people from many different parts of the world, and many of them ask me, almost daily, if we’ve had any more blackouts, or if water supply is working. It doesn’t matter if they live in North America, Europe or even Asia or Africa, almost everyone seems to know about the problem.

Since March 7th, we’ve suffered several major blackouts, some several days long in some parts of the country. And if there’s no power, water pumps don’t work and cell phone and internet service can’t function properly either. I can say that I’ve been fortunate in this regards, as the longest I’ve been without electricity has been 22 hours, while some cities have faced 60 and 72 hour long power outages. My cell phone company has had outages a for a few hours here and there, while others have been out for days at a time. Our most difficult situation has been a lack of tap water for 11 days, but other areas, even in my city, have had it even worse.

Everyone agrees that all services are failing due to the blackouts, but there are two vastly different versions as to why the blackouts are happening in the first place.

The official government explanation is that the country is under a massive terrorist attack perpetrated by the US government and its “lackeys” from the Venezuelan “extreme right wing”, in order to destabilize the “constitutional, legitimate and loved-by-the people” government. On the other hand, the opposition’s leaders state that blackouts are happening as a logical consequence of years upon years of corruption and bad maintenance practices that have severely compromised the countries capacity to generate electricity.

So, I am writing this to present you all with some of my thoughts on both versions…

The government says the first major blackout happened because the computer system that controls the generator workloads at the Simón Bolívar hydroelectric dam (which generates over 70% of the country’s electrical power) was hacked, causing it to crash and, with it, taking down the backup generators. Some hours later, an unspecified type of aircraft posed itself over some high-voltage power lines and began emitting “electromagnetic waves” that further compromised transmission capabilities.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into what I think of the electromagnetic wave generating aircraft that “was detected and seen”, but of which there isn’t even a single blurry photo. Most of mu thoughts have to do with the hack that, according to the government, started the whole nightmare. Government officials have also stated multiple times that there have been other attempts, going as far back as January, of hacking the dam’s control computer, until they finally succeeded on March 7th. Now, I have a computer in one of the offices at the university that I dare any hacker to break into. It’s a very old piece of hardware whose only function at this time is running the control software for a piece of lab equipment. Security features are nonexistent… it’s not even password-protected. The only issue for hackers is that it’s not connected to any network… not even the university intranet, so the only way to access the computer is to physically stand in front of it. Why am I mentioning this? Well, ever since the government announced its “cyberattack story”, I’ve been wondering: “This is a computer that controls the generator workload for over 70% of the country’s electricity. I assume it’s the only task that computer manages. Is it really necessary for that computer to be connected to the Internet, especially if you know someone’s trying to hack it? I really don’t see why, and so I find that story a little far-fetched.
A couple of weeks ago another big blackout occurred. Social media was full of photos of a fire/explosion in one of the main power transmission stations next to the dam. The official government explanation is that the fire was started by a sniper positioned on a hill adjacent to the transmission station with a high-powered sniper rifle equipped with a silencer. My gripes with this version are two: first, a bit of research shows that silencers are not nearly as effective as they are in movies, especially when used on high-powered rifles. Unless you use subsonic rounds in addition to the suppressor itself there will still be a fair amount of noise. The hill the government says the sniper shot from is about 600 meters from a Bolivarian National Guard Base. For me, the greater issue with this version is how that sniper got on that hill, with his rifle, in the first place. Access to all areas near the hydroelectric plant are closely guarded by the military and, as stated above, there is even a National Guard Base in the immediate vicinity. I personally don’t find it too feasible that a person could freely walk around the area carrying a high-powered rifle.

So, in my opinion, the official version has quite a few holes in it. Now, let’s look at what the opposition says.

The main angle of the opposition’s version is that there has been a general lack of maintenance for generators and transmission lines. I myself visited the Simón Bolívar dam way back in 2007. Back then, the tour guides openly stated that, out of 20 installed turbines, only seven were operational. That certainly doesn’t speak well for maintenance policies. Word on the street says that in February only four turbines were operational, and that on March 7th one of those four turbines failed causing an overload of the other three, which shut down, causing the first major blackout. The opposition says that a few days later, vegetation that had been allowed to grow too high around some electrical towers caught on fire due to heat, and that fire damaged the transmission lines, and not some electromagnetic wave-emitting aircraft.

As for the fire/explosion, the opposition hasn’t really given any more explanation other than equipment failure due to insufficient maintenance.

Another reason frequently cited by the opposition as being the cause of our electrical crisis is corruption. Venezuela went through another energy crisis a few years ago, attributed to our hydroelectric system not being able to generate enough power due to environmental factors; mainly, a drought during a year in which El Niño was stronger than usual. At the time, the Ministry of Electricity was created and, reportedly, over 600 million USD were allocated to repair and improve generation stations, both hydroelectric and thermoelectric. Before that, multimillion dollar investments were made in eolic generators (nothing has been said about investments in solar power, however. And living in the tropics, I find that a bit odd). Nobody knows whether the eolic generator park is actually working (nobody ever seems to talk about it), and we have seen absolutely no improvement in our electrical service after the investments stated above. Opposition representatives state that not one dollar of those 600 million actually went into any repairs or improve, but were rather all stolen by government officials.

Another source of controversy is the construction of the Manuel Piar hydroelectric dam, which would be the third hydro dam built on the Caroní river. Construction of this dam began in 2007, and it was supposed to become operational in 2012. One of the companies involved in construction was a subsidiary of infamous Odebrecht, and received almost 4.5 BILLION USD. As of 2019, construction of the Manuel Piar dam is reported as halted, and it has never produced a single kilowatt of power.

Expert electrical engineers state that, combining all hydroelectric and thermoelectric power plants, Venezuela has an installed capacity to generate 35 MW of power (not taking into consideration either eolic generation nor the Manuel Piar dam), and national power demand is currently around 12 MW. The main problem, according to these experts and many opposition representatives, is that of our total generating capacity, about 80% is non operational.

So, those are some of the facts about our energy crisis, and my own personal thoughts on the matter. Which of the two versions is actually true, or is the truth somewhere between the two? I guess it’s up to each one of us to decide what we believe. Personally, I apply Occam’s Razor to this. One version requires many assumptions of aspects that sound far-fetched and of which there is no real evidence. The other version’s assumptions require far less suspension of disbelief. In the end, I’m not buying what the government has to say.