After returning from her high-profile visit to New York City, one of Delcy Rodríguez’s first public appearances was a visit to the National Electric Dispatch Center in Caracas on September 25, where she called on people to use electricity “responsibly”. This was her response to what had happened in several parts of the country just hours earlier, when citizens took to the streets to show their frustration at the rapid increase in power-rationing hours in recent days.

While the interim president met with Donald Trump and introduced herself to the world as the best viable option for an orderly democratic transition in her address to the UN General Assembly, Venezuelans endured blackouts that were getting longer in both duration and frequency, even occurring twice a day in some cases.

Protests erupted from small towns in western Venezuela, like Caja Seca and El Tocuyo, to several locations in the heartland state of Guárico, like Calabozo, Zaraza, and Valle de la Pascua.

States in Los Andes and Los Llanos, which are more than used to carrying the heavy load of the blackouts, have witnessed an uptick in the amount of time they spend without electric power. Aside from the impact on daily routines, multiple sectors, like agriculture and retail commerce, have to deal with lower levels of productivity and, therefore, a reduction in their overall income, a luxury almost no one in this ravaged economy can afford.

The healthcare system is not shielded from this. Hospitals have to deal with not only the lack of electricity but also the fact that generators are either non-functional or lacking the fuel to operate, forcing personnel to use cell phones as flashlights to attend to patients and perform surgeries.

This comes as authorities acknowledged that electricity consumption in Venezuela reached a new historic peak of 16,030 megawatts, breaking the previous record of 15,579 MW achieved in May. Corpoelec’s President Juan Crisóstomo Fernández recently said: “We have a structural plan when we have to cross the demand with the generation. We’re going to reach that.”

Public discontent isn’t quite new: a few weeks ago, there were similar demonstrations across the country demanding, if not a concrete solution to the problem, at least some kind of relief, like offering a blackouts timetable that would allow people to take precautions. Fernández was named the new head of Corpoelec around that time.

Despite the pledge made by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright that our power grid could be stabilized in six to twelve months thanks to the agreements signed with GE Vernova, there have been no further public details of what those plans could actually entail in the short term.

The thermo-electric quick fix

A new series of factors have worsened the situation. Several media outlets have reported that in late August, there was a major failure at the Guri Hydroelectric Plant, where one of its turbines collapsed and then broke. Turbine 17 generated 770 MW, which is similar to the whole demand of Valencia (Venezuela’s third-largest city). There was also news of a second failure on Guri’s Turbine 15 around mid-September. Repairs could take a few months.

This incident adds to the long list of issues that Guri has been suffering from for many years now, and unfortunately increases the gap between the electricity produced and the much higher demand.

The government has put efforts into reactivating thermoelectric plants to alleviate the burden in certain areas, like in Carabobo (with Planta Centro and TermoCarabobo). Of course, this is not a foolproof plan, as they are exposed to irregular power fluctuations, as in the case of TermoZulia, forcing Zulia governor Luis Caldera to admit that such infrastructure serves as a backup to the main grid.

There have even been some proposals to include thermoelectric plants that have been barely functioning. In the state of Lara, there is one called Argimiro Gabaldón, located in Cabudare, opened in 2008 by Hugo Chávez. For most of its almost 20-year history, it has been a “white elephant.”

Previous promises of repairing it, like the ones made during the 2022 visit by then-Electricity Minister Néstor Reverol, have fallen by the wayside, but Lara governor Luis Reyes Reyes said in early August that there were discussions to do so, hypothetically incorporating 120 MW into the local power grid. Local leaders have demanded multiple times that the plant be put back into commission.

 What has the “Super Niño” wrought?

Going back to Delcy Rodriguez’s visit, she asked people to “join efforts and make a responsible use of energy to mitigate the Super Niño’s effects.” It’s not the first time that she has referred to this specific phenomenon and its implications for the national grid.

The consequences of the Super Niño are now being felt in South America, as meteorological agencies in the region (under CIIFEN, the International Center for the Research of El Niño) have estimated that high temperatures and low rainfall will continue until October.

One (if not the largest) of the concerns regarding the Super Niño is the matter of “excess deaths”: an increase in reported deaths linked to extraordinary circumstances (like heatwaves produced by the current weather) that could affect vulnerable people, such as children, the elderly, or those with chronic illnesses.

According to research from the University of Chicago, Venezuela could suffer 2,300 deaths as a result of El Niño, making it the second most affected in Latin America behind Brazil.

The University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab released a report titled “451,000 at Risk” that describes the number of excess deaths worldwide they estimate will happen from June 2026 to February 2027 during the current El Niño event. In its findings, they point out that most of those heat-related deaths will come from the Global South. Venezuela would have 2.300 heat-related deaths, making it the second most affected in Latin America behind Brazil (which is fifth overall with 13.300) and barely surpassing Colombia (with 2.200).

Parallel to this, Jesús Carrión, the head of Civil Protection in the city of El Tigre (Anzoátegui state), indicated that three people died of heart attacks related to high blood pressure that could be linked to the ongoing heatwave there, as temperatures reached the mid-30s ℃, given that the situation has been exacerbated by power outages affecting El Tigre during the last few months.

Across the country, the latest incarnation of El Niño is causing other difficulties besides its impact on the electric system: TalCual shows that those effects are being felt in everything from the loss of crops and a rise in food prices to increasing sleep deprivation because of hotter nighttime temperatures.