What do experts say about the national blackout that occurred in Venezuela?

Venezuela regained electricity early Saturday morning, after a massive blackout lasting more than 12 hours The government has described the event as “sabotage” by the opposition amid its allegations of electoral fraud, although experts point to a failure and collapse of the electrical system.

The fault originated at the Simón Bolívar hydroelectric plant, Venezuela’s main electricity generator, early Friday morning. The entire country was plunged into darkness, Reviving the ghost of the massive 2019 blackout that lasted an average of five days.

“We are normalizing, regularizing, step by step with guarantees, with security,” said Nicolás Maduro on Friday night. He did not provide details to avoid, as he explained, a “counterattack.” However, service interruptions have been frequent for more than a decade, especially in the province.

Maduro often presents them as opposition plans to overthrow him, although experts speak of a lack of investment and maintenance in the electrical system and its distribution networks.

“I think what happened was a fault and the fault should not have gotten worse.”. But the Venezuelan electrical system is so precarious that one thing led to another (…) and the distribution networks were affected,” José Aguilar, an electrical risk analysis specialist, told AFP.

“It was probably caused by an atmospheric discharge” and the protective equipment “failed” due to a lack of “maintenance or replacement,” said Victor Poleo, former Vice Minister of Electric Energy.

Experts talk about the blackout in Venezuela

Electricity began to arrive in some states after 12 hours of blackout, at 4:00 p.m. local time on Friday (8:00 p.m. GMT), and It was restored in almost the entire country in the early hours of Saturday morningaccording to local media and users consulted by AFP.

In Andean states such as Mérida and Táchira, or their neighbours Lara and Zulia in the west, there are reports of intermittent service, although these are regions normally hit by prolonged daily power outages.

“In Michelena (Táchira) he arrived around midnight, he had arrived earlier in the afternoon, but he left and (came back, and since then) he hasn’t left again,” Thais Hernández, a 29-year-old dentist, told AFP.

The NGO VE Without Filterwhich measures the level of internet connection in the country reported 92.7% connectivity at dawn on Saturday.

Caracas metro service has also been fully restored.

Maduro spoke of the “father and mother of all the attacks that have been made on Guri,” as the hydroelectric plant is popularly known, taking the name of the town where it is located in the state of Bolívar.

«Years of electricity crisis»

«Behind this there is a strategic planning, there is a lot of money (…) and if one says a detail that should not be given It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve made a counterattack as they did the first time in March 2019,” he said, accusing the “fascists,” as he calls the opposition, and the United States, another staunch enemy.

The incident It is registered one month before the elections of July 28in which Maduro was proclaimed re-elected for a third consecutive six-year term, until 2031, amid allegations of fraud.

Even before the elections, the government had warned of a possible “attack” on the electrical system to prevent the process or try to take political power through “destabilizing maneuvers.”

«15 years of electricity crisis (…) the Maduro regime insists on blaming the opposition»Poleo added. “Blackouts benefit totalitarian regimes” because they allow them to “exercise greater control over the population” and “divert attention from their own failures.”

“It is an attack full of revenge, an attack full of hate,” Maduro insisted. “I demand justice for the material and intellectual authors of this criminal attack.”

On the radar: opposition leader María Corina Machado and Maduro’s rival in the elections, Edmundo González Urrutia, for whom the president has already requested jail time. Both are in hiding.

González Urrutia, 75, had a summons for Friday at the prosecutor’s office, which opened a criminal investigation against him. It was the third summons, but he did not attend. It is not clear how the procedure ended amid the national blackout.