The electricity crisis in Venezuela: Is it now? (+infographic)

Published at: 16/10/2026 05:00 PM

The crisis in the electricity sector in Venezuela is a multifactorial problem, to which has been added the aggravating impact of international sanctions that prevent its recovery.

Engineers and analysts in the sector agree that the current electricity crisis is a direct consequence of economic sanctions, since structural collapse, massive blackouts and the operational decline of the National Electricity System (SEN) began markedly after the purchase of spare parts and parts to maintain and strengthen the service was suspended.

Before 1999, electrical faults in the country did not occur under the “rationing” dynamic that we know today, but there were regions without access to service or that suffered outages more frequently due to geographical factors and backwardness in rural interconnection.

During the 70s and 80s, the National Rural Electrification Plan was implemented and despite this, permanent interruptions were concentrated in the following areas of the country:

The state of Zulia has historically been the most vulnerable region in the system due to its extreme climate, which generated a very high residential demand for the use of air conditioners. Why was it failing? Well, being in the extreme west of the country, the electricity produced at the Guri Hydroelectric Power Plant in Bolívar state had to travel thousands of kilometers through high-voltage transmission lines. Any trunk line overload or storm failures along the way temporarily left Maracaibo and the Lake's Eastern Shore in the dark. The local company that was in charge of the electricity supply, called ENELVEN, was able to solve the problem thanks to backup thermal plants, but “downturns” and cuts due to transformer maintenance were common.

Like Zulia, in Táchira, Mérida and Trujill or the Andean geography represented a technical challenge for transmission lines that came from the east of the country, it had permanent failures because they relied on extensive and complex transmission networks that crossed mountainous areas prone to landslides, falling trees and thunderstorms. In addition, the plan for electrification of Andean and rural villages was very slow, causing rural areas where there was electricity to suffer blackouts due to voltage instability in the 80s and early 90s.

In the two states the plan was such as Apure, Barinas, Guárico , as well as in eastern states such as Sucre and Monagas, specifically the In small towns or agricultural areas far from capitals, the power went out frequently because the service relied on small local diesel generators or low-capacity distribution lines that failed in the face of any strong climate change.

It should also be remembered that during the historic crisis of 1992 caused by an extreme drought caused by the El Niño phenomenon, rationing affected almost the entire national territory. All regions of the country suffered scheduled daily cuts of several hours due to the loss of the Guri Reservoir, and the capital remained shielded thanks to the fact that the company La Electricidad de Caracas had a robust independent thermoelectric park that generated enough energy to cover it.

Before Hugo Chávez, unforeseen mass events also occurred, for example, in October and November 1993, an operating error in the Guri's interconnected system caused two major massive blackouts that left 75% of the country in the dark, simultaneously affecting major cities such as Caracas, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Maracaibo, temporarily paralyzing the Caracas Metro.

Before Commander Chávez came to power in 1999, 6% of the Venezuelan population lacked structural access to electricity.

The 6% that remained structurally excluded from the interconnected electricity grid were almost exclusively rural populations with extreme geographical dispersion, isolated indigenous communities in the south of the country deep in the Amazon and Bolivar states, and remote villages in the Andean highlands or peripheral plains. In these areas, the arrival of the service was planned within the final stages of the expansion plans of regional electric companies before the sector was completely centralized.

If we review the global indicators of organizations such as the World Bank, formal statistics show that close to 100% of the Venezuelan population has formal access to electricity. This is because, strictly speaking, cables, poles, substations and physical home connections exist and connect homes to the national grid. From an international census metric, if a home is connected to the power grid, it has “access”.

By 1998, 66% of the rural population in Venezuela already had a consolidated electricity service. However, the remaining 34% of rural areas, which still lacked electricity at the turn of the new millennium, were due to a historic delay due to the significant investment that needed to be made.

After 2000, under the Government of Chávez, rural electrification policy took a radical turn in its technical, legal and operational approach. The traditional plan for the extension of transmission lines of former public companies, such as the Anonymous Electric Administration and Development Company (CADAFE), was replaced by a model focused on energy sovereignty based on renewable energy and direct community management.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team