About camels and dromedaries

You energy consumers make their decisions individually.

Each factory chooses the beginning and end of its work shifts; O Commerce has its variations, depending on whether it is a neighborhood store or a store within a shopping center; and the same occurs in homes, with showers in the morning, in the late afternoon or middle of the night, using the washing machine during the week or only on Saturday, and so on.

All these habits end up materializing through electrical energy consumption curves. Each consumer ends up having a “energy identity”, which translates your consumption habits into load curves.

In several places around the world, including California (USA), The network load curve is known as Duck Curve, which is when there is a very big difference between moments of high consumption versus those with high energy injection into the electrical grid.

This is a highly unwanted phenomenon that needs to be controlled so that there is no electrical system collapse. The most efficient way to maintain this friendly relationship with the network is store part or all excess energy from peak generation moments to discharge it into the grid in peak consumption times.

Already in Brazil, the figures presented below show the hourly consumption curves for a period of one week (day 1 is Sunday).

In Figure 2, for example, we can observe the profile of a consumer who only consumes energy during the day, with a short break for lunch, every day of the week, including Saturdays and Sundays.

Finally, in Figure 4, we can observe a consumer who does not consume during the weekends.

At the end of the day, different habits mean different needs. Understanding these habits means knowing what offer to make to each type of consumer, so that the value added by a service or product is maximized, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

At Volt Robotics, we developed intelligent algorithms that mapped these habits for more than 30 thousand consumers and, thus, we were able to know who to offer storage, solar generation, energy efficiency, etc. to.

Our clients use these profiles to operate commercially in locations and regions where their products and services are competitive, providing unbeatable offers.

Here is the testimony of a Volt customer who works with hybrid systems with solar energy and storage systems “We reduced the area of activity of our commercial team and concentrated marketing actions, including digital media, on the regions where our target consumers were located. The result: we reduce costs and increase sales. It was something that seemed impossible.”

But the system is made up of millions of consumers, each with their own habits and energetic identity. By adding up all these energy identities, we obtain Brazil's consumption profile. By accessing the ON (National Electric System Operator) website, we can view Brazil's consumption profile at different times.

For example, on a typical business day in 2017, Brazil had the consumption profile shown in Figure 4.

There is a decreasing consumption from midnight to 4 am; From then on, consumption increases until 11 am, presents a slight reduction for lunch and a slight recovery in the early afternoon, showing a new increase in consumption in the late afternoon, between 5 pm and 6 pm, and then a decline until 23 hours.

One of the operational challenges that the ONS faced every day was having machines available in hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants to be progressively activated in order to make the energy supply sufficient to meet consumption safely.

Just to give you a numerical idea of the challenge, at 4 am the consumption was in the order of 52,000 MW, while at 11 am the consumption was in the order of 66,000 MW. In other words, in seven hours there was an increase of 14,000 MW in consumption, or a “ramp” of 2,000 MW per hour. At the end of the afternoon, in just one hour, consumption showed an important peak, with a ramp of 5,000 MW per hour.

Therefore, every day, one of the biggest challenges of the operation is getting the plants to follow the consumption ramps. It is something that must occur every day, without the right to Saturdays, Sundays or holidays.

Moving forward a little in time, we reached 2023 and carried out the same analysis on a typical business day, resulting in the orange curve in Figure 5.

The first notable fact is the growth in consumption, especially during peak hours, at 6pm: in 2017, the peak was approximately 70,000 MW; in 2023, 81,000 MW. An increase of almost 16%, or an equivalent annual increase of 2.5%.

The second notable fact is the end of the morning ramp. In 2017, as we have already seen, the ramp was 2,000 MW per hour; by 2023, it has reduced to less than 500 MW per hour.

Have consumers changed their consumption habits that much? Did transport systems stop transporting people in the morning? Did offices and factories stop starting their workdays in the morning?

The answer is no. What happened was that systemic consumption began to be met in the mornings by solar energy, both centralized and decentralized.

In 2017, the solar source practically did not exist. Currently, there are more than 28,000 MW of installed capacity in decentralized generation, and another 14,000 MW in centralized generation. In terms of energy, there are around 8,000 average MW, as illustrated in Figure 6.

If, on the one hand, the morning curve was eliminated by solar generation, in the late afternoon – when the sun sets – the increase in consumption began to occur at a more intense pace.

In 2023, the afternoon ramp begins practically at 11am, with a consumption of around 65,000MW, and reaches a peak of 81,000 MW at 6pm, that is, the ramp lasts seven hours, at a load increase rate of approximately 2,300 MW per hour.

In short, there is currently a single afternoon ramp, of 2,300 MW per hour; in 2017, the most intense ramp was 2,000 MW per hour and occurred in the morning, and another ramp occurred late in the afternoon. It's as if the camel had turned into a dromedary!!!

These ramps can be seen as a risk to the operation or as a business opportunity. It all depends on how we evolve regulation and, above all, price formation.

If the ramp is seen only as a risk, the solution will be to hire many thermoelectric plants to be activated during the afternoon to ensure security in meeting peak consumption. The cost will be extremely high and will probably be shared among all consumers through the Capacity Charge.

If the ramp is viewed as an opportunity, we will improve pricing mechanisms and the tariff structure to reflect the need for expensive resources at the end of the day. The price of energy and the tariff will be more expensive in the late afternoon, and cheaper in periods of low consumption (early mornings or mornings, for example).

Consumers, wanting to escape expensive prices and, at the same time, consume at lower price times, will change their habits and their “energy identities”, install storage systems and afternoon consumption will be reduced, the load curve will have a much smaller peak, consequently reducing the need for thermoelectric plants.

By reducing the consumption peak in the late afternoon, the curve stops looking like the dromedary, giving rise to a new animal that we still have to study carefully. In your opinion, what animal would this be? Leave your comments on this article and participate in the discussion.