Why Venezuela’s Power Grid Was Easy to Disrupt

Energy is a currency, and like any currency, it can be used as a weapon.

Venezuela is one of the clearest examples of what happens when an energy system is weak at its foundations.

For decades, the country has operated with a fragile and unreliable power grid. Corruption, poor governance, and short-term decision-making shaped the system early on. In the early 2000s, electricity generation was handled by multiple players. That changed in 2007, when the government created CORPOELEC, a fully state-owned utility that went on to absorb most other power companies, centralizing control over generation, transmission, and distribution.

Venezuela generates electricity in several ways, but hydroelectric power dominates, contributing more than 60% of total generation. The most critical asset in this setup is the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant (Guri Dam) in Bolívar State.

Since CORPOELEC’s formation, very little effort has gone into modernizing infrastructure. Some plants still operate with equipment that is more than two decades old. As turbines aged and maintenance declined, efficiency steadily dropped. The problem was not limited to hydroelectric facilities, thermoelectric plants also struggled, largely due to fuel shortages and operational constraints.

With weak generation capacity, fragile transmission lines, and unreliable distribution, outages became frequent. Over time, the grid became increasingly vulnerable, not just to internal failure, but to external disruption as well.

CORPOELEC’s inefficiencies turned into a structural risk. Outdated technology, limited safeguards, and poor oversight left the system exposed. When a grid reaches this state, it doesn’t take much to push it over the edge.

The United States has maintained long-standing sanctions on PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company, along with restrictions on related entities. Enforcing these measures has required sustained institutional capability, coordination, and technical oversight. Despite repeated attempts to bypass sanctions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (OFAC), has consistently demonstrated an ability to detect evasion, adapt quickly, and take decisive action, including enforcement activity as recent as December 31, 2025.

As the U.S. President stated, “The lights of Caracas were largely turned off, due to a certain expertise that we have.” However one chooses to interpret that remark, it points to a broader reality: the United States conducts its operations in a highly structured and disciplined manner. When an energy system is outdated, poorly maintained, and exposed, those weaknesses can be identified and leveraged efficiently. In this case, they clearly were.

Early Observations Using Adhishthana Prinicples

There is very limited public data on Venezuela’s power generation. CORPOELEC has not consistently released datasets, and its website is currently unavailable, which, in itself, is an interesting development(“expertise”) given the timing. Because of this, we are working with secondary data sources and using interpolation to build an initial dataset.

Applying the Adhishthana principles at a preliminary level, the recent Caracas outage appears to align with Phase 9 of the Adhishthana cycle. The outages seem to reflect a breakdown originating from a cakra formation, which offers one way of understanding how the event unfolded. This is an early observation, not a conclusion. We are still validating the data and refining the model.

We followed a similar exploratory approach in earlier work on U.S. nuclear power outages, where recurring patterns emerged over time: A Cyclical Structural Analysis of U.S. Nuclear Power Outages (2015–2023) Using the Adhishthana Principles

At this stage, the main takeaway is simple: energy infrastructure matters more than it appears on the surface. It has become increasingly important for governments to maintain strong and resilient energy systems.

Any power system can be disrupted, energy grids are inherently susceptible to that risk. What differs is how predictable those failures are, how resilient the system is, and how prepared institutions are as stress builds over time. Looking at grids through the Adhishthana principles offers one way to study both domestic outage risk and structural vulnerabilities in other energy systems. Governments and agencies, including those in the United States, can benefit from examining these Adhishthana patterns more closely as part of broader preparedness and analysis efforts.

In this case, the patterns appear consistent with a Phase 9 breakdown, referred to as the move of Pralay. This is still an early reading, and the analysis is ongoing. We’ll share updates once the report is more complete, but the way CORPOELEC operated for decades, and how the system collapsed over the years, makes this a particularly interesting case to study.

More details as the research develops:

Adhishthana for Government