Venezuela patching up power grid

Venezuela's state-owned utility Corpoelec is patching up the country's dilapidated power grid by cannibalizing electricity turbines, transformers and other equipment following a string of catastrophic blackouts in March and early April.

Power supply since the nationwide blackouts is spotty at best. Western Venezuela, including oil-producing Zulia state, is still subject to supply rationing for up to 20 hours per day. At the opposite extreme, Caracas enjoys more steady supply, but parts of the capital regularly go dark as well.

US financial and oil sanctions impede Venezuela from importing critical spare parts and equipment, and state-owned oil company PdV is unable to supply diesel or natural gas to run thermal plants.

Faced with these constraints, officials from Corpoelec and senior electricity union (Fetraelec) who are critical of the government tell Argus that technicians are engaged in a fool's bargain of cannibalizing parts and equipment to try to fend off outages.

In one notable example, Corpoelec this month transferred a large-capacity transformer from the San Geronimo substation in Guarico state to the Guri substation at the 10GW Simon Bolivar hydroelectric complex in Bolivar state.

The 765kV transformer now at Guri will enable Corpoelec to boost hydropower transmission from Bolivar state to the rest of the country by up to 400MW, the electricity ministry said. "It was decided to move the transformer that was designated a back-up unit at the San Geronimo substation because it was needed more urgently at Guri," a ministry official said.

The downside of the ministry's decision is that the critical San Geronimo substation now has no back-up capacity.

"Transformer breakdowns at the San Geronimo and La Horqueta 765kV substations have been the chief cause of numerous multi-state blackouts since 2016," a senior Fetraelec official said. "Moving San Geronimo's back-up transformer to Guri has made the grid more vulnerable."

Corpoelec this month also dismantled a partially operational 171MW GE turbine at its 1.38GW Josefa Joaquina Sanchez Bastidas (Tacoa) thermal complex at Catia La Mar near Caracas for reinstallation at the 1.3GW Termozulia thermal complex in Zulia. Termozulia currently generates only 45MW of electricity, leaving Zulia completely dependent on Guri's reduced operational generation capacity of about 5GW, a Corpoelec official in Maracaibo said.

The turbine moved from Tacoa to Termozulia in Maracaibo is intended to replace another turbine that was transferred to Zulia in September 2018 from the 5mn t/yr Sidor steelmaking complex in Bolivar state which has been shut down since late 2018.

The turbine moved from Sidor to Termozulia last year was installed and commissioned before end-September 2018 but it only operated from October to December 2018 before breaking down because it was technically incompatible with key components at Termozulia, the Corpoelec official acknowledged.

"The Cuban technicians responsible for installing the Sidor turbine at Termozulia did not bother to read the installation and operation manuals and so were unaware of the technical incompatibilities that caused its catastrophic failure," a senior Fetraelec official said.

In another instance, Corpoelec technicians in Zulia this month dismantled turbine components at the 350MW Bachaquero thermal power plant on the eastern coast of Lake Maracaibo with the aim of reinstalling the parts at Termozulia across the lake. It is unclear if the parts stripped from the Bachaquero facility are compatible with Termozulia units.

The Corpoelec official said the electricity ministry ordered the cannibalization of the Bachaquero turbines because the complex, which originally was scheduled for completion in 2015, was never commissioned.

In another move with repercussions for Venezuela's eventual reconstruction, Corpoelec since May 2018 has quietly dismantled three substations on Venezuela's western border with Colombia, wiping out its capacity to import up to 336MW of electricity from Colombia or export 205MW to Colombia. The transformers were reinstalled at substations in Zulia during the past year, but up to six national blackouts since March 2019 caused all of the transformers to fail, the Corpoelec official in Maracaibo said.

"Corpoelec's aim in relocating these transformers was to strengthen the grid, particularly in Zulia and the Andean states of Tachira, Merida and Trujillo, but the grid's structural problems are so widespread that these temporary fixes amount to putting a bandage on an arterial hemorrhage," the Corpoelec official said.

Nearby Zulia state, which hosts the country's oldest oil fields, currently receives about 500MW from Guri, or roughly 28pc of the state's normal electricity demand of about 1.8GW, according to a Corpoelec operations report.

As in PdV, Corpoelec in recent years has lost thousands of technicians in a wave of emigration that amounts to at least 4mn people, or more than 13pc of Venezuela's population.