Brazil is going through an unprecedented crisis in its electricity sector: there is no shortage of energy — there is a surplus. This diagnosis was presented by the former president of... PetroBrazilian and former senator Jean Paul Prates during an interview on the program Direto ao Ponto, on Jovem Pan.
According to him, the rapid expansion of renewable sources, especially solar distributed generation (DG), has created a new dynamic in the electrical system that has not yet been fully absorbed by national energy planning.
In this context, Prates stated that the delay in holding the battery auction, considered strategic to guarantee stability and storage of the generated energy, represents a serious error. "It's a somewhat silent crisis. It's not a crisis of energy shortage. That's the point," he said.
For the former president of PetroIn Brazil, the main factor behind this new reality is the accelerated growth of distributed solar generation in the country, whose installed capacity in this segment already exceeds 43 GW – a volume equivalent to several large hydroelectric plants.
According to Prates, this growth was not properly incorporated into energy planning, since distributed generation (DG) has historically never been treated by the competent bodies of the Federal Government as a new source of generation.
"What we're seeing, this movement that we consider small – each person installing their own solar panel at home – today represents 43 GW that wasn't in the forecast of any energy agency," he commented.
Energy crisis "in reverse"
The former senator described the current situation as a reverse energy crisis, since the Brazilian electrical system has historically been structured to deal with scarcity, but not with excess production at specific times.
"For at least three years we have been experiencing the opposite crisis. It is a crisis of surplus supply, which cannot find an outlet," he stated.
Despite the diagnosis, Prates stressed that the situation is fully manageable from a technical standpoint. According to him, the central problem is not technological, but one of coordination between public policies, expansion of generation, and modernization of the electrical grid.
In the opinion of the former president of PetroIn Brazil, the variability of renewable energy sources can be managed through digitized networks, intelligent operating systems, and more flexible tariff mechanisms.
He states that, in several countries, dynamic pricing already encourages consumption during periods of excess generation, even bringing the price of energy to zero at certain times.
Still, he believes that the lack of large-scale storage limits the system's ability to take advantage of this energy abundance. "Everyone knows we need to stabilize our generation with the use of batteries," he stated.
According to Prates, without these systems, the operator is forced to resort to more expensive thermal sources even when renewable energy is available. "Why did we wait so long when we actually have so many renewable resources?" he criticized.
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They didn't build transmission lines, they allowed everyone to install PV plants, and now they think the solution is batteries. Lack of planning, and now batteries have become the hero of the moment!!! I've been a power generator since 2001, working with CCEE and distributed generation, and in those 25 years in the field, what I've seen most are government and planning errors.