Venezuela to Announce Measures to Regulate Electricity Use

Venezuela will announce measures to ration the use of electricity in a press conference tomorrow as rising demand outpaces generation capacity and causes intermitent blackouts across the South American country, Vice President Elias Jaua said.

Failures at five transformers at the Tablazo power plant in Zulia state yesterday caused more than 3,000 megawatts to go offline and left the country’s most populous state without electricity. The government is replacing the transformers and hopes to resolve the issue tonight, Jaua said in comments on state television.

Jaua said that President Hugo Chavez, who is currently recovering from an unplanned surgery in Cuba, has been in contact with his cabinet to design policies to resolve the electricity problems.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net