Guri dam countdown...

[CJvR]

A very intresting analysis of the evolving power disaster in Venezuela.

http://www.firstenercastfinancial.com/f ... drama.html

In about 70 days the no-fail base power component in the Venezuelan power grid will... fail.

[cosmicalstorm]

I had no idea about this. If I know Chavez there will be some way to blame the US for all this.

[Phantasee]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

This is very interesting news and I'm kind of surprised it's not covered more extensively. Maybe the media are waiting for the potential collapse to come nearer before they cover it?

[CJvR]

This is very interesting news and I'm kind of surprised it's not covered more extensively.

Well it is not yet a disaster, only a potential disaster and those have far less news value. Take Africa for example when the crops fail, aid workers can predict the coming famine months in advance but it isn't until people are dying that the media show up that the rest of the world notices what is going on.

The 240m level on the Guri dam isn't a total cutoff point btw. The 10 older turbines and 2 of the newer ones can operate below that level (for the 10 oldest units down to 200m) but it will reduce output by half. Worse the dams downstream depend on Guri reservoar for most of their water so running Guri at reduced effect will strangle the downstream plants as well (depending on the waterlevels in their reservoars naturally - but I doubt they are better than in the Guri reservoar). For every MWh produced at Guri the lower dams produce another 0.75MWh from the same water. Cutting the flow from Guri will slash about a third of Venezuela's electricity, unless they open the floodgates to feed the lower reservoars - thus draining Guri even worse.

[K. A. Pital]

Bad rainfall > lots of hydropower share in electricity > bad consequences.

Too bad, shit happens, all that. Not exactly without precedent either. Similar shit happened in Georgia (dam collapse where 1 dam provided nigh 100% of the nation's electricity). Georgia survived, plunging into North Korea-like darkness, but the consequences were fucking ugly indeed.

[Mayabird]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

While it still has some decent news coverage, it's becoming yet another Murdoch rag, just with a higher production value left over from old times.


Adding to what Stas said, Tajikistan (or possibly one of those other little -stans) has seriously problems in winter because their electricity mostly comes from hydropower and their waterways freeze when the winter gets really harsh, right when people really need the heat.

[K. A. Pital]

Adding to what Stas said, Tajikistan (or possibly one of those other little -stans) has seriously problems in winter because their electricity mostly comes from hydropower and their waterways freeze when the winter gets really harsh, right when people really need the heat.

That's right, Tajikistan. A large part of their ongoing malnutrition crisis is linked to their energy crisis, which in turn is linked to the situation at the Nurek Dam.

[tim31]

My little island is so reliably rainy as well as full of valleys that hydro power was a logical choice. Yet they still discovered that it was dependent upon an unchanging climate, and as such a fallback plan was set up in the form of an undersea cable to the mainland*. And this is for just on half a million people. Eggs all in one basket.



*which they wound up using to sell off peak power to the mainland.

[CJvR]

Venezuela continues to tempt fate in their struggle against an electricity supply collapse. Against the political rhetoric about grand plans to construct massive new generation capacity and reduce 'wasteful' consumption, stands the empirical facts....consumption is growing like mad, and even the existing thermoelectric generation infrastructure can't maintain its output.

A disaster is still far from inevitable. Like the North American natural gas market, the weather is the biggest variable. But it is likely to be no more than a stay of execution, because it requires precipitation on the order of a six sigma event to restore the reservoir to a level that can take them through the end of 2010 without further pain.

Latest Developments

* The El Guri Reservoir now has less than 12 meters of usable water, compared to 32 meters when full
* The reservoir was falling at about 8 cm per day in January. It fell at 11 cm/day in Feb. It is currently falling about 17cm/day now.
* The rainy season should start in the next 6 weeks. Inflows are still way way below normal.
* A very rough extrapolation puts the reservoir at empty in about 9 weeks.
* Power use in Venezuela is climbing quickly, mostly due to hot weather.
* Thermoelectric output has fallen. Daily output is very dependent on just a few larger plants, so their uptime % has a big impact on the amount of water released from the hydro dams.
* It seems that corruption and incompetence are preventing enforcement of the existing restrictions on power consumption at businesses and homes.
* The Bolivar (Ven $) is under pressure, and the exchange rate is gyrating. Inflation is spiking and food shortages are a little more prevalent (nothing major). 90% of Ven exports are petroleum, and 60% of food is imported. High oil prices are helping a bit, but net exports are falling because so much fuel is re-imported to power private generators and new power plants. All the anecdotal data point negative (but that's been the story of Venezuela since Hugo)

[Sky Captain]

Just goes to show how important is diversification of energy sources and what happens if there is overreliance on one particular source that depends on weather to operate properly.

[MKSheppard]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

Nationalization isn't certainly helping the Venezulan Power Industry, or any of the other industries that Chaves has taken over of the past decade or so. The first thing that generally happens is that the experienced managers say "screw it" and leave; along with some of the higher level skilled workers themselves. I believe it's gotten so bad that Chavez is ostensibly now importing Cubans to help fix some of the problems in Venezula's Power industry.

[Pelranius]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

Nationalization isn't certainly helping the Venezulan Power Industry, or any of the other industries that Chaves has taken over of the past decade or so. The first thing that generally happens is that the experienced managers say "screw it" and leave; along with some of the higher level skilled workers themselves. I believe it's gotten so bad that Chavez is ostensibly now importing Cubans to help fix some of the problems in Venezula's Power industry.

Well, I guess it prevents the experienced managers and so forth from being put onto the same boat of blame as Chavez apparently has found himself in.

[Ryan Thunder]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

Nationalization isn't certainly helping the Venezulan Power Industry, or any of the other industries that Chaves has taken over of the past decade or so. The first thing that generally happens is that the experienced managers say "screw it" and leave; along with some of the higher level skilled workers themselves. I believe it's gotten so bad that Chavez is ostensibly now importing Cubans to help fix some of the problems in Venezula's Power industry.

Are you saying that there's something inherently wrong with nationalizing something as vital as electricity production, or just the way Chavez did it?

[K. A. Pital]

I find it amusing that out of all the sources I looked at, only the Wall Street Journal blames nationalization of the power industry for this in addition to the drought.

Nationalization isn't certainly helping the Venezulan Power Industry, or any of the other industries that Chaves has taken over of the past decade or so. The first thing that generally happens is that the experienced managers say "screw it" and leave; along with some of the higher level skilled workers themselves. I believe it's gotten so bad that Chavez is ostensibly now importing Cubans to help fix some of the problems in Venezula's Power industry.

However, if the Cubans manage to run Venezuela's power better in the future, why the hell not? Privatization of power generation has been an unmitigated disaster here in Russia, which caused a massive spike in costs and prices and infrastructure degradation.

I'm not sure the picture you paint is correct anyhow, Shep - I heard that Venezuela's share of non-petroleum exports rose in the past decade (not sure, someone can correct me here). This means they are doing something right, at least they are diversifying their economy, as opposed to being content with remaining a fucked-up petrostate which they were before. Also, Venezuela is diversifying trade partnerships, with rising shares of China, Brazil in their economic international policy. That's a good sign of also not putting all eggs in one basket (that being the USA).

I'm not sure how many "skilled workers" leave - for example, the nationalization of SIDOR ended a year of strikes. I can't believe a year of strikes being much more productive than the plant's operation under the government. Much less do I believe that skilled workers of SIDOR who were striking and demanding nationalization, somehow "left" due to the nationalization. On the other hand, yes, nationalization can cripple management because management is often foreign-staffed when we're talking about foreign plants. This is a problem that any nation has to deal with.

[Phantasee]

Asking the Cubans to come in and help out during an emergency isn't exactly a bad thing. Looking out for your fellow socialists is probably a good move by both Havana and Caracas, considering how close they are to the US.

[CJvR]

Some updates:

http://energyevidence.com/Oil/supplyVenezuela.aspx

The heatwave have died down somewhat reducing power consumption and pushing the daily drop down to less than 15cm again. It also seems as if some non-hydro power have gone online lately but Guri is still headed for deadpool levels...

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm not sure the picture you paint is correct anyhow, Shep - I heard that Venezuela's share of non-petroleum exports rose in the past decade (not sure, someone can correct me here). This means they are doing something right, at least they are diversifying their economy, as opposed to being content with remaining a fucked-up petrostate which they were before.

Venezuela has also had some major plunges in oil production in the last decade, and the average production rate is also down, so non oil exports increasing in ratio shows nothing on its own. It’s the absolute values that count. The economy has been growing in Venezuela, but this doesn’t change the reality that more and more items are subject to price controls because of high inflation. A healthy economy does not require that the government seize the supermarkets to control the price of bread. Unless they can get past that stupidity its just a house of cards being stacked up.

[K. A. Pital]

A healthy economy does not require that the government seize the supermarkets to control the price of bread.

Who said Venezuela's economy is healthy, anyway? I said they were a fucked-up petrostate. A healthy economy is not a common characteristic of petrostates. A lack of controls likewise does not indicate a healthy economy. Controls can be abscent in both a healthy and a bad economy.

[CJvR]

A Corpoelec pdf in Spanish but with some intresting pictures and graphs regarding the situation.

Also some very nice images of a sunken church resurfacing as the reservoar drops.

http://www.soberania.org/Informes/Infor ... 2-2009.pdf

[CJvR]

Intrestingly enough the terrible drought that caused this situation doesn't seem to have been that terrible according to the PDF in the post above. The rains in 2009 was only 13% off the historical average if I interpret the Spanish diagrams correct. The spring in 2009 was very wet. A system that is on the verge of failing catastrophically over a 13% variation in something as variable as weather is not a particulary stabil system.

[Phantasee]

The pictures of the church resurfacing were pretty spooky. Thanks for the link! I've been having trouble finding many sources on this in English.

[CJvR]

It seems as if the total disaster in Venezuela is on hold for now.

The Guri reservoar is now belived to bottom out at 242m thanks to rationing and extended holidays.

[CJvR]

Appocalypse in Venezuela is canceled!

Early rains are stabilizing the reservoar, now predicted not to drop below 248m.
However unless it is a flood of biblical proportions or more alternate power goes online there is a risk that we will see a rerun of this spring's countdown next year, Appocalypse in Venezuela part II.

[K. A. Pital]

I hope they diversify their power supply before an energy disaster strikes; unlike Georgia or Tajikistan, both of which have witnessed firsthand what it means to lose the primary source of electricity.

[Shroom Man 777]

Russia should sell them nuclear power plants.