EN 
PT_BR 
O ONS (National Electric System Operator) issued, this Thursday (05), a official announcement, available on your site, about the conditions of access to the transmission network. In a note, it committed to reprocessing access requests that were denied due to the lack of flow margin.
In this case, the Operator will now consider structural solutions for expanding the transmission network, according to the premises and studies published by EPE (Energy Research Company), even though the works have not been tendered. In these situations, the viability of the flow will be conditioned on the start of operation of the structural work.
Until the issuance of the statement, the ONS was conditioning the attestation of the viability of access opinions to the effective granting of transmission works that aim to expand the flow capacity of the SIN (National Interconnected System). Check it out, link, the flowchart with the analysis of access requests.
“The statement was issued amidst a scenario of pressure from access requesters and intense dialogues with sector associations”, said Luiza Melcop, partner lawyer at Cortez Pimentel Advogados, specialized in the area of energy and infrastructure regulation.
On December 14th, ABSOLAR (Brazilian Solar Energy Association) and ABEEólica (Brazilian Wind Energy Association) held a meeting with the Operator to discuss the matter. Consequently, on the 16th, the ONS released a letter that pointed out that it was pertinent to deepen the discussion of the proposal, thus culminating in the note released this Thursday (05).
“In view of the broad competition for project generation flow margin, access opinions, which used to come with restrictions under normal operating conditions, began to be denied by the Operator, in view of the exhaustion of transmission capacity in some regions of the country, notably in the North of Minas and the Northeast region”, explained the lawyer.
“At the end of the day, the ONS' concern in issuing opinions with access without the prospect of viability is relevant and plausible, as flow capacity is not an abstract rule, but rather a materially measurable item in the SIN”, he emphasized.
In her view, the problem is that the denial of access opinions conflicts with the legal precept that the provision of public transmission services is a utility that must be continuously made available to the user.
“So, the absence of an effective solution to the dispute over the flow margin could lead to a wave of legalizations to guarantee the right to predictability in the use of this service”, he added.
MME intervention
At the end of the statement, the ONS explains the need for intervention by the MME (Ministry of Energy Mines) on the matter, “mainly because studies on structuring the transmission flow margin auctions are evolving in a public consultation at the Ministry, that could organize the imbalance faced in the face of the expansion of generation and the intrinsic limits to the transmission infrastructure”, concluded Luiza.
