On Thursday, the San Geronimo B substation in the center of the country, which supplies electricity to four out of five Venezuelans from the massive Guri hydropower plant, went down.
No date has been set to restart the plant and most workers were told to stay home on Monday, said two of the substation’s workers and a manager at the national power monopoly, Corpoelec. Their names have been withheld to protect them from government reprisals.
The nearby San Geronimo A backup substation, which transmits much weaker current from the smaller Matagua hydropower plant, operated intermittently on Sunday. Supplies from Matagua and a few unreliable thermoelectric plants allowed the government to send sporadic power to Caracas throughout the day.
The government said the blackout was caused by an unspecified fault at Guri, which provides 80 percent of the country’s electricity.
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