São Paulo: the power crisis amid a fight for power

Paris, the City of Light, is one of Europe’s biggest and most bustling cities. And one could make an argument that São Paulo, Latin America’s biggest and most chaotic city, could make a claim to the “City of Light” moniker, with its 24-hour energy and pulsating skyline. 

But that perhaps tenuous comparison looks wildly inaccurate over the last week, as more than a million São Paulo residents stayed the whole weekend without electricity after a powerful storm and high winds. 

Going by the numbers, blackouts and power cuts in Brazil’s megacity are not becoming more common, but the frequency and length of outages in São Paulo over recent years, often caused by weather, has left many residents irate — and it is Italian multinational Enel, responsible for distributing electricity to the São Paulo metro area, that is bearing the brunt of the criticism.

And there is an added element to the outrage, as October is the month of Brazil’s municipal elections. Last week’s power cuts came near the start of the runoff campaign, as incumbent Mayor Ricardo Nunes gears up to take on left-wing Congressman Guilherme Boulos.

Whether these electricity supply issues will affect the result on October 27 is unclear, but not impossible — especially as the city is gearing up for more outages this coming weekend, according to weather warnings from the state’s Civil Defense force.

Mr. Nunes remains the clear favorite, but frustrations with the current state of things could spell trouble for the incumbent. And a quick glance at the forecast for the rest of the month suggests that, for the night before polls open, yet another thunderstorm is on the cards. 

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