Sparse rain expands power supply risk in Brazil

OREANDA-NEWS. The Brazilian government's electric sector monitoring committee (CMSE) has raised the risk of electricity supply deficits in the southeast/center-west subsystem to 6.1pc from a previous 4.9pc, and plans to maintain all thermoelectric plants on stream in 2015.

The new bleaker assessment followed lower-than-expected rainfall in January, which resulted in a net decline of 2.6 percentage points in the water levels of hydroelectric reservoirs in the strategic subsystem in January.

The CMSE highlighted that an additional 504MW had already been added to the grid this year, including an additional 186MW of thermoelectric capacity at the Baixada Fluminense plant in RIo de Janeiro state. The government expects a total of 6,410MW of new generation capacity this year.

To reduce the risk of shortages, the government is also seeking to accelerate maintenance at thermoelectric plants operated by state-controlled oil company Petrobras. These thermoelectric plants should contribute a total of 867MW by 18 February.

Many of Brazil?s thermal plants operate on imported LNG.

The government is calling on businesses to operate their emergency generators during peak consumption periods. Most of these generators run on diesel.

Although the CMSE continues to downplay the possibility of power rationing, it admitted for the first time that the risk of power shortages for the southeast/center-west subsystem has increased.

The CMSE calculation assumes that all of Brazil's thermoelectric capacity will be dispatched throughout 2015, in an effort to slow the decline of hydro reservoirs.

Local electric energy think tank PSR says the risk of power rationing is greater than 50pc.