Venezuela Electrical Crisis

Chavez brought his incompetence to govern Venezuela. We didn't have this problem before since 1960-1997.

We were happier then, and we didn’t know.

Venezuela's provinces are sacrificed for the sake of Caracas
A power-rationing program has saved the Venezuelan capital city from outages, but hits most of the province. The Planta Centro complex, one of Latin America's largest thermal power plants, is also working at full capacity

Only one of the three Tacoa power generation units is operating

Energy The Ministry of Electricity and the National Electrical Corporation (Corpoelec) reported on Tuesday on the implementation of a power-rationing program in most of the country. The step was taken due to maintenance works in Unit 8 of Tacoa thermal power plant in the state of Vargas (northern Venezuela's coast).Igor Gavidia, the head of the National Center for Electric Power Delivery of the National Electricity System (SEN), said in a press release that power-rationing began on Tuesday, including a load of 300 megawatts (MW). The rationing program, he added, "will continue with two blocks of 200 MW each, depending on the increase of power demand" at night. The implementation of a power-rationing program has prevented outages in the Venezuelan capital but hits most of the province. The Planta Centro complex, one of Latin America's largest thermal power plants, is also working at full capacity.As stated by the competent authorities, the power cut was made in proportion to the demand of each state. A total of 120 MW were cut in the central part of the country, the plains region and part of the western Venezuelan states. According to the report the cuts were as follows: Carabobo (14 percent); Yaracuy (1 percent); Guárico (3 percent); Cojedes (1 percent); Portuguesa (3 percent); Miranda (4 percent); Aragua (8 percent); Falcón (5 percent) and lower Apure (1 percent).The Ministry of Electricity cut 27 MW in the western states of the country: Mérida (1 percent); Táchira (3 percent); Trujillo (2 percent); Barinas (2 percent) and the higher parts of Apure (1 percent). In the eastern region of the country, the power rationing amounted to 75 MW, and it was as follows: Sucre (4 percent); Monagas (6 percent); Anzoátegui (12 percent) and Nueva Esparta (3 percent). In the case of Lara and Zulia states the power-rationing was 5 percent and 21 percent, respectively.mleon@eluniversal.comTranslated by Gerardo Cárdenas

Cadafe's thermoelectric power plants running at fifth of capacity

Source:

http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/01/26/cadafes-thermoelectric-power-plants-running-at-a-fifth-of-capacity/

Cadafe’s Thermoelectric power plants running at a fifth of capacity
January 26, 2010
Today’s El Nacional has this table compiled from the country’s Electric Corporation which shows the performance of the different thermoelectric power plants managed by CADAFE:

As you can see, of the total generation capacity of 4,507 MW installed, barely 941 MW or 20.9 % of the installed capacity, demonstrating that the problems we are having have little to do with the level of the Guri dam or the atmospheric phenomenon El Niño, but have more to do with the sheer incompetence and the lack of investment in maintenance of “Er Niño Chávez” and the people he has surrounded himself with, mostly mediocre military who can not tell the difference between a MW and a MHz.

But the sheer incompetence of the robolution can bee seen right there in that table, the Josefa Camejo plant in Falcón State was started and built by the Chávez administration, but it only produces a fraction of its potential because someone forgot to build the associated transmission lines. Thus, the plant produces too much for the nearby cities and is not part of the interconnected system, running at a lower capacity. Way to go Hugo!

The remarkable thing is that Chávez continues to blame the problem on the Guri dam and on the projects for hydroelectric power plants that he stopped in order to favor thermoelectric projects that either don’t exist and/or work as well as the table above shows.