The power in the capital went out after 4 pm on Monday and immediately backed up traffic as stop lights and the subway stopped working during rush hour.

Netblocks, a group monitoring internet activity, said network data showed most of Venezuela was knocked offline with national connectivity at just 6 per cent after the latest cuts.

The normally non-stop state TV channel, a key way for the government to keep people informed, was also off the air, leaving frustrated Venezuelans to wonder how long they would be left in the dark.

Venezuela suffered a series of blackouts in March, the worst in decades, that left millions of people without running water and telecommunications. That exacerbated an economic crisis that has halved the size of the economy.

The oil-rich country's hyper-inflationary economic crisis has led to widespread shortages in food and medicine, prompting over 4 million Venezuelans to leave the country.

President Nicolas Maduro has blamed the blackouts on a US-sponsored "electromagnetic attack" against the nation's biggest hydroelectric dam.

But his opponents say the outages have laid bare years of under-investment in the nation's power grid by corrupt officials who mismanaged an oil bonanza in the nation sitting atop the world's largest crude reserves.

Australian Associated Press