Electric Power - Venezuela - Brief blackout hits Caracas, 8 states

A power outage left Venezuela's capital city Caracas and eight states in the dark on Sunday (Oct 19) morning, state news agency ABN reported.

A failure on the Gurí-Malena transmission line at the San Gerónimo substation disrupted power flows to Caracas in addition to states including Aragua, Lara, Guárico, Cojedes, Táchira, Trujillo and Mérida.

The Caracas metro was forced to evacuate passengers and traffic lights went out across the capital city causing widespread disruption, according to local press reports.

Officials reported power had been restored to 100% of the affected areas by around 3:00pm local time on Sunday but said the outage was unusual.

"There is no reason, from a technical point of view, for this failure," said Hipólito Izquierdo, president of Venezuela's state power company Corpoelec. "But it's strange and it worries us the blackout occurred on a Sunday, when demand is low and there is no industrial demand."

The official did not rule out sabotage and said authorities were still investigating the incident.

Venezuela was last affected by a widespread outage on September 1, when authorities reported a problem at the San Gerónimo substation affected power transmission from the Gurí dam to other parts of the country.

Another blackout affected 16 states on April 29. The ministry responded by saying it was prepared to invest US$3.7bn in the country's power sector.

Venezuela nationalized its power industry in 2007, when the country's oil and energy ministry and state oil company PDVSA took control of flagship company EDC.

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