Venezuela’s New Power Rationing Round Slows Factories and Daily Life

Venezuela · ENERGY

Load cuts widen across the interior while Caracas trims office hours and shopping malls go dim.

A fresh round of electricity rationing in Venezuela has spread through August, cutting power for hours a day across most states. Manufacturers say the cuts are already eating into a recovery that had been the country’s best in years.

What the new rationing round changes

Electricity rationing in Venezuela moved from improvised outages to a formal plan during the first half of August. The Ministry of Electric Energy and business groups met on August 6 to agree measures.

Electric Energy Minister Rolando Alcalá and Vice President for Public Works Juan José Ramírez led the session. Tito López, head of Conindustria, the Venezuelan confederation of industrialists, attended for the private sector.

Officials asked large users to cut air conditioning, limit lifts and escalators, and run their own generators. This round of electricity rationing in Venezuela named shopping centres, hotels and industrial parks first.

On August 17 the Venezuelan Chamber of Shopping Centres agreed to dim its malls for eight weeks. Air conditioning and escalators stop from noon to 4pm and again from 6pm to 10pm.

Why the grid is failing now

The trigger was not drought but damage and decay. Two earthquakes on June 24 hit generation and transmission, and the system never fully recovered.

The Termocarabobo thermal plant lost the 600 megawatts it had been generating after the June quakes. Officials said in early August that 300 megawatts were back, with 450 the target.

Venezuela’s thermal fleet is the deeper problem. Plants generate roughly 2,700 megawatts out of about 21,000 megawatts of installed capacity, close to a tenth.

Tacoa, Planta Centro and Ramón Laguna, together nominally above 5,000 megawatts, are largely out of service. Engineers point to missed maintenance, fuel quality and corrosion rather than weather.

Peak demand has been reported near 15,600 megawatts during the hottest weeks. The structural gap between supply and demand runs at roughly 2,000 megawatts.

Guri holds water, but the turbines cannot keep up

Guri, formally the Simón Bolívar hydroelectric plant on the Caroní river, supplies most of the country’s power. Its reservoir is usually blamed for electricity rationing in Venezuela.

That explanation does not fit this year. Energy analyst Nelson Hernández put the July level at 269.11 metres above sea level, near the operating maximum.

In the 2016 drought the reservoir fell to 242.56 metres, some 26 metres lower. Operators have even spilled water because turbines cannot convert the inflow into electricity.

The government still frames the crisis around a strong El Niño season and asks households to save. Hernández warns the real drought risk arrives in 2027, not now.

What industry says it is losing

The Conindustria second-quarter survey gives the clearest numbers so far. Members lost 214 of 488 available working hours to power failures, or 44 percent.

That was 68 percent worse than the first quarter of 2026. Plants recorded about 57 unscheduled interruptions each quarter, roughly five every week.

The burden is uneven across regions. Zulia averaged 333 hours without power, the Andes 295 and the central-western states 263.

Greater Caracas recorded 82 hours over the same three months. The capital is shielded, but the gap with the interior is now the story.

Electricity rationing in Venezuela therefore lands hardest on the industrial west. Diesel bills of US$ 2,500 to US$ 3,000 a month keep some lines running.

Growth survives, but the smallest firms do not

The odd part is that output still rose. Manufacturing grew 8.1 percent in the first half, after 9.9 percent and 6.5 percent quarters.

Capacity use climbed to 51.7 percent from 46.1 percent a year earlier. The recovery is real, but it runs on borrowed diesel and shortened shifts.

The split inside the numbers matters more. Large industry expanded 10.8 percent while small industry contracted 5.4 percent.

Big plants can afford generators, fuel contracts and maintenance crews. Small workshops cannot, and they simply stop when the feeder goes down.

Conindustria says 69 percent of the industrial park already has some self-generation. That leaves roughly a third of it exposed to every scheduled cut.

Caracas and the interior live in different countries

The capital has long been protected from the worst load shedding. That protection is thinner now, and it comes with visible rules.

Caracas Mayor Carmen Meléndez cut public-sector working hours in early August. Many offices now close around 12:30pm under the energy-saving order.

Inspectors from the industry and commerce ministry visited supermarkets and hotels on August 11. The checks were about compliance with consumption limits, not supply failures.

Outside Caracas the picture is blunter. Zulia, Mérida, Táchira and Trujillo report the longest and most frequent cuts.

Scheduled blocks of at least four hours a day are common in interior states. Residents in several states reported five to eight hours during August protests.

No published national timetable

One practical problem is that nobody can plan. Corporación Eléctrica Nacional, the state utility known as Corpoelec, has not published a nationwide schedule.

A map of rationing hours by state circulated widely in August. Efecto Cocuyo verified on August 10 that it was not an official document.

Regional utilities do publish local timetables, and those change often. Business groups have asked for a firm calendar so they can plan production.

Electricity rationing in Venezuela is therefore uneven and hard to predict. That uncertainty is itself a cost for factories, shops and households.

What it means for expats and remote workers

In Caracas, the practical effect is shorter public-office hours and dimmer malls. Power itself remains more reliable than anywhere else in the country.

In the interior, plan around blocks of four hours or more without grid power. A building with a generator and a water pump is worth paying for.

Mobile networks and fixed internet follow the grid once backup batteries run down. Remote workers in Zulia or the Andes should assume daily connectivity gaps.

Electricity tariffs rose more than 30 percent across the system this year. Protests over bills and outages reached eight states on August 14.

Electricity rationing in Venezuela looks likely to persist into the fourth quarter. Officials promise 4,800 megawatts of new capacity by year-end, a claim engineers doubt.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• www.bancaynegocios.com
• www.elnacional.com
• elpitazo.net
• efectococuyo.com
• efectococuyo.com
• efectococuyo.com
• www.elnacional.com
• lapatilla.com
• www.infobae.com
• elpitazo.net
• talcualdigital.com
• cronica.uno
• www.el-carabobeno.com

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