From Collapse to a Solution: Three-Phase Plan to Stabilize Venezuela’s National Power Grid

A new episode of massive instability in Venezuela’s National Electric System left much of the country’s west and Andean region in darkness on Saturday, August 29. The failure hit Zulia, Mérida, Falcón, Táchira, Barinas, Trujillo and Apure, while telephone and internet networks also went down.

Activos por la Luz, a civil organization, later assessed conditions in 31 sectors of Lara state and neighboring areas of Yaracuy. Its monitoring recorded 22 outages totaling 78 hours and 26 minutes, along with 22 voltage fluctuations. Each monitored sector experienced an average outage of three hours and 44 minutes.

Iribarren accounted for 17 outages across 22 monitored sectors, totaling 54 hours and 10 minutes without power. Palavecino recorded four interruptions across six sectors, totaling 18 hours and 28 minutes, as well as nine voltage fluctuations. Simón Planas reported one outage lasting five hours and 48 minutes, plus two fluctuations. Border sectors in Peña, Yaracuy, recorded at least three severe fluctuations.

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The 765-kilovolt lines that leave the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri form the backbone of the national electric system and end at the Yaracuy substation, located near Yaritagua and the Rio Turbio sugar mill.

Engineer Raúl Azparren of Activos por la Luz said the western-central electrical node has strategic importance. The 765-kilovolt lines from the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri form the backbone of the national system and end at the Yaracuy substation near Yaritagua and the Rio Turbio sugar mill.

Azparren said the substation feeds Barquisimeto, Cabudare and Yaritagua, as well as 400-kilovolt lines serving mainly Zulia and 230-kilovolt lines supplying the Andean region, Barinas and part of Apure. He said the simultaneous interruption could indicate a severe failure at Yaracuy or failures on lines to those regions that triggered a domino effect. He also criticized what he described as a lack of technical information from the state electricity company.

Julio César Gutiérrez, president of the Lara Engineers Center, said the system faces a severe structural deficit. Installed capacity exceeds 30,000 megawatts, but actual supply reaches only 12,000 megawatts against national demand of 15,800 megawatts. He attributed the vulnerability partly to an 80 percent dependence on the Caroní River and the inactivity of 80 percent of the regional thermal power fleet, including Planta Centro, Termozulia and Ramón Laguna.

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The simultaneous interruption in all these states indicates that a severe event occurred directly at the Yaracuy substation and affected those lines, or that failures on the lines to those regions triggered a domino effect across the rest of the system. All of this occurs amid absolute opacity, as the state-owned company provides no official technical information.