EN 
PT_BR 
The special commission of Chamber of Deputies approved, this Tuesday (14), PL 1917 (Bill No. 1917/15), which provides for the total opening of the Free market of electricity for all Brazilian consumers, including residential consumers.
The proposal, also known as the electricity bill portability PL, aims to allow consumers to contract energy from other suppliers and not just the distributor to which they are connected.
The expectation of the initiative's defenders is that the new form of commercialization will increase the level of competition in the supply of electrical energy, contributing to the reduction of costs and the final price of energy paid by the consumer.
If the PL is also approved in the Senate, migration between markets will take place within 72 months after the law comes into force and the The Executive Branch will be responsible for presenting a plan for the change, with all guidelines for consumers.
In addition to opening the free market, the approved opinion includes other important points, such as rules for extending the concession of hydroelectric plants with power exceeding 50 MW.
Bernardo Marangon, andspecialist in electrical energy markets and director of Exact Energy, the new proposal will make GD and Mercado Livre coexist together. “With the new rules, I believe that GD and Mercado Livre will begin to have greater competition, since Mercado Livre must remain and GD, which was an adjustment made to allow solar energy to exist within the hiring, tends to disappear in the long term”, he commented.
Retail agents
The approved document also allows residential consumers to purchase electricity from retail agents, who will represent them before the CCEE (Electricity Trading Chamber), entity that centralizes energy purchase and sale contracts in Brazil.
The text also allows retailers to offer their customers differentiated rates based on time and prepaid service. To make the new market viable, the opinion determines the separation between ballast and energy in the electricity sector.
In this model, the plants commit to making power available to the electrical system and being remunerated by a charge charged to consumers' electricity bills. Additionally, all energy produced will be sold separately, in the form of MWh, to citizens.
Thus, the plants will have two main sources of revenue: the ballast charge and the amount of electricity sold to customers through retail agents. The separation makes it possible to sell it as a product subject to market rules, such as cell phone plans.
The proposal also allows auctions to be held to purchase ballast to increase the reliability of the electrical system. As stated in the proposal, the auctions will be defined during the law regulation stage.
Long term agreement
The PL also proposes rules for long-term agreements between distributors and generation plants. Currently, under the law in force in the country, distributors are obliged to purchase enough energy to supply the market. With the free environment, these companies will lose part of their customers, which will lead to contracted energy surpluses.
Because of this, there will be a tariff charge, in proportion to the monthly consumption of all Brazilian customers, to cover any losses to distributors. It will therefore be up to the ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) define the tariff value.
