The Electric Comedy by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual
That’s the way they have ruled for eleven years.
Pure improvisation. Shooting arrows without knowing where they are going to fall.
Groping. Blindly trying to hit the piñata. Measures that defy common sense, and then have to rectify in haste. The comedy they performed with the shopping centers has been one for the record books. Forwrads and backwards. They provoked the power shortfall by sheer incompetence and now not even know how to manage forced rationing which is the inevitable consequence. The arguments justify themselves are not even cynical because of their absolute stupidity. First it was the person responsible for planning, Giordani, who had no other idea but blame previous governments for the lack of investment in the sector. When hey realized that after eleven years (ie, two governments of the their predecessors plus the fifth of another one), one had to laugh at the excuse of “previous administrations” , then they changed to “El Niño”. Now global warming is responsible, the summer drought, the declining water mass of the Guri dam.
Nonsense. The simple truth is that the country has experienced the infinite inability of Chacumbele and his government team.
Any planner except for Giordani and any president other than Chavez knows that if the population grows, demand for electricity grows and therefore it becomes necessary to invest permamnently and continuously to ensure that power generation will always be ahead of population growth.
Nobody with half a brain would not realize that after five consecutive years of the oil boom, with an economic policy that encouraged excess imports and with it the growth of trade and construction that accompanies it, should have contributed as an additional reason to pay attention to investment in the electric sector. The worst thing is they can not even argue the lack of resources. There was excess of funds.
But the inability and ineffectiveness of the government of Hugo Chávez are unbeatable. Not even years of frequent power outages throughout the interior of the country managed to sensitize the herd of useless bureaucrats who govern us.
They did none of the things they had to.
Giordani ruled that hydroelectric capacity had reached its limit and backed down dfrom the construction of four dams on the Upper Caroni. Of the 29 power plants, which had to be operationalsince 2007, only five have been built , of which two are still inoperable and three are operating at one third of its capacity. Out of sheer laziness Planta Centro was allowed to collapse and nationalized Electricidad de Caracas suspended its investment plan. Of the investment in transmission lines only a quarter of the budget has been executed that would have financed work thats houdl ahve been completed in 2007. Under these conditions of a gap in alternate generation gap, Guri is overused and therefore its level falls beyond what a dry summer would cause. We come then to El Niño and other similar trifles. The government is to blame and nobody else. The country will not forgive him.
The Devil's Excrement 
May 29, 2010 at 7:16 am
[…] de electricidade? Falhas de electricidade num país produtor de petróleo? O que se passará na […]
January 13, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Veneconomia article: Guri near collapse. Date: 2003
http://bit.ly/88hlh6
Whose fault is it?
January 10, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I read an article in the Wall Street Journal (I think) that quoted some engineering expert from Venezuela. He claimed that Venezuela had somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 megawatts of undeveloped hydroelectric power potential. I find that huge number rather hard to believe, but hydro is the way to go, so long as you don’t flood too much of the country. I doubt that would be a major problem, since Venezuela is quite a large country. Some Canadians are doing it (Check out Hydro-Quebec) and making money selling electricity to the USA and the rest of Canada.
January 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm
firepigette, I’m with you. In fact, after I read your first two comments, I said to myself, “self, this is great, others DO understand.” I then went on to read the rest of the comments and couldn’t believe that NO ONE picked up on what you had written, until I arrived upon your latter comments.
In Miguel’s other post about the electricity “crises”, I and at least one other had written a similar warning: This ‘crisis’ is as much about “control” as it is electricity.
Having grown up in Miami – and subsequently watching Miami’s Cubans misplay, misunderstand and mistakingly respond to Castro for nearly 50 years – I see the Venezuelan opposition making the same mistakes.
Your initial comments were spot on and I respectfully repeat them here:
“An impoverished population totally dependent on the “State”( Castro) for their subsistence and as such unable to rebel.”
“Chavez creates chaos, and then comes in to tighten his control with the excuse that chaos needs order.”
January 8, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Kepler,
Just to inform you that it is common knowledge that all citizens have a right to opine, not just you and those you approve of.
I find it incredible the amount of naive people in Venezuela and on these oppo blogs, and I can guarantee you that it is the main cause of where we are today.
The fact that anybody at this point can think that Chavez has good intentions, shows a lack of psychological understanding that is at unacceptable levels.
The way things have gone and the way I hear people talking : 10 more years from now people will still be wondering why.
Petkoff is an okay politician who sometimes writes good articles,but is basically another highly duped naive.He is too ideological.It takes a more practical man to see reality.
We need to work on corruption and justice before we can expect things to run well.
As obvious as the sun shines and gives light.
January 8, 2010 at 2:21 pm
the problem with wind is that you need to also build another generation plant of some type, so that when the wind stops you still have power. solar for its cost still does not put out very much power. At least most people recognize these things and a lot of work improving the alternatives is going on. Back when I was a kid they told us nuke plants would make all the electricity we could ever want, dirt cheap. ( the early 60s)
January 8, 2010 at 10:59 am
Not you, Firepigette, you better mind what is happening in the US.
January 8, 2010 at 9:46 am
“region of Venezuela would also help to take more intelligent decisions at all levels, preferably if the information is out there for all to see on real time.”
Who will do the seeing?
I would laugh if it were not so tragic.
By far the biggest problem in Venezuela is the naivety of the people.We need to wake up before we can solve problems.The information is all there but nobody sees because this is NOT their motivation.
Too many people in Venezuela have more interest in an unearned buck than in doing the right thing.
Those who want to do the right thing need to create the right circumstances first.
January 8, 2010 at 4:59 am
Charly,
Thanks.
Bruni,
There is just one thing I am weary about: meddling in the Southern Bolivar or Amazonas region. I have been there a couple of times and I have seen already how things have deteriorated and how beautiful they are. I just hope they (in general) can find better solutions elsewhere.
Europe has no other way to go, but does that mean we have to destroy the jungle more than necessary? Europe destroyed its forests, sure. Do we need to do it given the technology and foreknowledge? OK. To what extent?
There is a lot to be done when a dam covers huge areas of territory under water.
Perhaps we could think ahead in that sense as well.
Oil is much more expensive in Europe than in North America and that is not so much because “there was no other way around it”, but because of a desire to get off oil dependency and later because of environmental grorunds. Europe pays the price for starting to polluting less than North America. I am fine with that.
I think people can find other ways to compensate, new economic possibilities will be created.
canada’s is wondrous but the biological diversity is very small. A dam here, a dam there don’t do as much harm there as in Venezuela.
What I am saying is that all possibilities need to be taken into account before we take that way.
The Spanish example I put before could be a compromise. Meanwhile a lot can be done to be more efficient.
Engineers in Venezuela have confirmed me what I have seen as a layman: people build now in the most stupid ways there with regards to heat dispersion, all places now are closed and don’t allow good air circulation, with crappy materials for heat and they end up becoming furnaces while there were other perfectly good alternatives. If people built according to certain criteria, less air conditioning would be needed.
As someone else said here, a control of where electricity gets lost in every region of Venezuela would also help to take more intelligent decisions at all levels, preferably if the information is out there for all to see on real time.
January 7, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Europe does not have many choices. They do not have cheap oil like North America, nor large hydroelectric sources like Québec, Vzla or Brasil, so they either go nuclear or add new types of generation like winds.
Winds are stochastic and can create special undesirable behaviors in the electric system that have to be dealt with very carefully. The turbines are ugly and noisy (people that live close to wind farms complain about the bugging noise) but yes, wind is totally green. So that is the trade-off.
Venezuela has absolutely every type of energy source there is, in abundance. It is just amazing that the country was driven to such a situation.There are no excuses.
There is cheap oil, lots of money, huge hydro-electric potential, winds, sun and even coal.
When I was a young engineer, power capacity was planned fifteen years ahead. I cannot understand how on earth the country was driven to such a lose-lose situation. Absolutely unbelievable.
January 7, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Kepler,
In Europe they have plenty of money so they can afford exotic power generation devices. A windmill involves enormous costs and produces relatively little energy because it depends on the wind. Now that most hydro has been developed in Europe, the alternative to wind/solar is nuclear as cost of fuel makes conventional oil fired thermal non attractive and Co2 production makes coal fired thermal an annex to hell. Nuclear is also problematic as people will eventually glow in the dark.
You mention Andasol power station. It costs about USD7,500 per kW installed. By comparison hydro would be around USD 2,500/kW an thermal probably less than USD 1,000/kW installed, but Andasol O&M costs would be very low. It is all a matter of economics with due consideration to what the future holds in store and this my friend is a big unknown.
January 7, 2010 at 4:01 pm
charly,
Is that so?
I know nothing about it, but I wonder why eolic is working in Europe, in spite of all limitations.
On solar-thermal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station
Would that not be a possibility for Venezuela?
I have read some time ago in a general magazine that solar panels have been becoming much cheaper lately.
Miguel, I think the environment is an issue. We know the government did not do anything right but that is another thing.
What time are we talking about? Now? Then now there is no time for them. Earlier? Then there was time for other solutions.
When was that study prepared? Who did it?
January 7, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Kepler, the last thing you want is a pure hydro system to avoid overall deficitsthroughout the generation system during drought periods. Eolic is terribly expensive because it is unreliable, solar even more because of the cost of the solar cells. So you fall back on conventional coal or oil fired thermal and/or nuclear. A hydro/thermal/nuclear mix is the best such as the interconnected NEPOOL network in the Northeast of North America.
In this region, too much emphasis was placed on hydro (that does’nt burn fuel, hence cheap to operate), so when the drought came, Colombia disconnected the Venezuela link from its network. The best bet for Venezuela is to invest in oil fired thermal. One worrying issue with hydro in Venezuela is that Guri is humongous. If the plant which I understand is maintained in a sub-standard fashion, floods as occurred recently at the largest Russian hydropowr plant, then Venezuela goes back overnight to pre-industrial age.
January 7, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Hey Moctavio, you’re fast, kudos!
January 7, 2010 at 2:40 pm
I agree with most but for this: dams in Upper caroní? Where? Is that environmentally right?
I wonder if there aren’t other alternatives to energy production in Venezuela:
eolic, solar…
January 7, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Perhaps I should have said it more simply:
Petkoff when he says: “Blindly trying to hit the piñata.”
He gives Chavez the credit for good intentions in trying to provide sufficient electricity and other services, but failing because of ineptness.
In reality Cahvez is not really trying so hard :
A simple case where “trying” is lying.
January 7, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I agree with Daniel on this issue.They hire inepts BECAUSE they do not care about the people.Look at Cuba ( Chavez’s model) for what Chavez wants to obtain:
An impoverished population totally dependent on the “State”( Castro) for their subsistence and as such unable to rebel.
Chavez creates chaos, and then comes in to tighten his control with the excuse that chaos needs order .
This is a game that only very naive and dependent people are willing to play.