Venezuela signs GE deal to rebuild crippled power grid

Venezuela signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric’s power business at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, presenting the deal as a fresh bid to rebuild an electricity system that has left much of the country in the dark. Interim President Delcy Rodriguez said the aim was to modernize and optimize the national grid, and she urged her teams to formalize the contract quickly.

The agreement, reported as involving GE Vernova and the state utility Corpoelec, followed about six weeks of joint audits and assessments of the country’s deteriorating power infrastructure. Eric Gray, who heads GE Vernova’s power segment, attended the ceremony, underscoring the company’s direct role in a sector that has become one of Venezuela’s most visible public failures. In one account, GE executive Roger Martella said the company’s mission was to help electricity reach everyone.

The government cast the pact in hard numbers: 1,000 megawatts of added capacity in the first two years, and 5,000 megawatts within four years. Some coverage framed that as 1 gigawatt within 24 months and more than 5 gigawatts over four years. Those targets are ambitious for a grid that has suffered for more than a decade from neglect, underinvestment and political mismanagement, with daily outages in some parts of the country lasting up to 10 hours.

The challenge is not new. Venezuela’s system once included more than 30 gigawatts of hydroelectric and thermal generation, along with about 30,000 kilometers of transmission lines and nearly 130,000 kilometers in distribution. Much of the country has long depended on the Guri hydroelectric complex on the Caroní River, and the nationwide collapse in 2019 exposed how fragile the network had become.

Outside Caracas, the damage remains severe. Recent reporting has said residents in Zulia can face outages of six hours a day or more, a reminder that the crisis is not only about inconvenience but also about hospitals, water systems, schools and industry. Analysts say a durable fix will require more than patchwork repairs, calling for new thermal generation, transmission upgrades, decentralized power, tariff reform and a stronger regulatory framework. One recent estimate placed the sector’s investment shortfall at about $15 billion.

Rodriguez has already framed the talks as part of a wider push, saying in April that Venezuela was negotiating with Siemens and General Electric on electricity recovery plans for Zulia. The GE pact now tests whether Caracas can turn another headline agreement into functioning power on the ground, or whether it will join a long list of promises that did little to keep the lights on.