https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...blackout-what-caused-it-and-what-happens-next
"In May last year, a union leader representing workers in the state power corporation, was arrested by Venezuela’s intelligence service, Sebin, after warning that poor maintenance and systemic problems meant that a blackout was likely to happen...
Miguel Lara, former chief of the state-run agency responsible for the electricity system, said that one of Latin America’s best-managed and most productive electrical networks had, in recent years, been underfunded and overexploited.
Lara said that the advice of qualified engineers had been ignored, causing many to leave. Without them, he added, the network had fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair.
“The network lines and transformers weren’t looked after and got overgrown with vegetation and that vegetation started to cause failures. It’s poor maintenance and negligence.”
Lara flatly rejected suggestions of cyber sabotage, as did engineers who told the Associated Press that the computers that monitor the Guri plant’s operating systems are not connected to the internet.
“The control and supervision systems are interconnected and are from the 1990s and have never been updated,” said Lara. “They’re obsolete technology.”
He also said the area around the Guri dam was too well guarded to allow intruders to gain access. “There’s no way anyone gets in there,” he said. “There’s a whole chain of command that regulates who’s allowed in to carry out works.”
His thoughts echoed those of Chávez’s former oil minister, Rafael Ramírez, who went into exile after splitting with Maduro in 2017.
“Guri has collapsed because of a lack of maintenance, just like the thermoelectric plants and the transmission and distribution lines,” he tweeted."