ANEEL prepares rules to prevent abuses in Mercado Livre

A ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) is preparing a monitoring model to try to minimize cases of abuse of economic power in the migration of consumers to the Free Energy Market.

According to the Agency's director, Ricardo Tili, the Subsidy Collection was ready to be launched, but the departure of a server caused the process to be postponed. 

ABRACEEL (Brazilian Association of Electric Energy Traders) has received some complaints in which the network's monopoly agent, in this case the distributor, uses this position to leverage another competitive activity, which is the sale of energy. The topic was highlighted in one of the panels at Lefosse Energy Day, held in São Paulo, on Thursday (9). 

Bernardo Sicsú, vice president of Strategy and Communication at ABRACEEL, cited an example in which a consumer signed a contract with an independent retailer and, after terminating the contract, received a more advantageous proposal to migrate to the free market from another retailer linked to the distributor's economic group.

 “The consumer receives a proposal based on data that only the distributor has. And the most worrying thing is that the proposal indicates an early and fine-free migration, a condition that can only be offered by an integrated group”, said the executive. 

After receiving the complaints from ABRACEEL, Tili determined that the SFF (Superintendence of Economic, Financial and Market Inspection) open an inspection process to verify cases of anti-competitive practices in the market.

A first solution was already designed and ready to be discussed with the agents, however the server of ANEEL who was handling the matter passed a competition for the Chamber of Deputies, hindering the progress of the agenda. 

Server outflows have been a problem for the ANEEL, which needs to deal with a large volume of processes outside the regulatory agenda, as was the case with the regulation of Provisional Measure 1.212/2024, which expired on July 8.

In addition to the departure of employees, the Valorization of Regulation movement has also affected the work of the agency, which currently has a staff 25% smaller than what was planned five years ago. 

For Sicsú, there are two ways to mitigate these cases. First, intensify monitoring, and to do this it is necessary to value the employees of the ANEEL. Second, create regulations that can improve the rules to avoid these anti-competitive situations. 

ABRACEEL suggested to ANEEL also centralize requests for contract terminations at CCEE (Electric Energy Commercialization Chamber).

“This will allow, initially, CCEE to have this information and not other agents. The Chamber will better manage this data to mitigate this information asymmetry. Using this centralized and simplified model, we can have better reports so that the regulator itself knows what is happening”, said Sicsú. 

“It is important to say that these situations of abuse of economic power are not widespread. They are often localized and need to be treated specifically, but in regulation we will be able to take a general look at mitigating this”, added the ABRACEEL representative. 

A ANEEL also reached an agreement with CADE (Administrative Council for Economic Defense) to contribute to monitoring competition in the Free Energy Market.

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