Caracas Chronicles

As the electricity crisis deepens in Venezuela, it strikes me that one basic variable is missing from this whole discussion: price. In all the back-and-forth about drought and under-investment, the simple insight that maybe Venezuelans use so much juice because it’s just so damn cheap never seems to occur to anyone.

So lets get down to brass tacks: what do you pay? It’s surprisingly difficult to find data on the cost of residential electricity in Venezuela online. So Juan and I thought it’d be interesting to ask readers to scan their electric bills and send them in. 

Here in Montreal, you pay 5.45 cents for each of the first 900 kilowatt hours you consume each month, and 7.46/kWh for anything above that. So, before tax, my January-February bill worked out to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour:

Send us yours! Reach us on caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm. Especially if you’re in Venezuela. Don’t worry, we’ll black out any information that could identify you, as I’ve done here.

And before you get all weepy for me, bear in mind, that’s a 60-day winter bill, and my heating is electric, so…