Risk of water rationing lower and lower, says minister

Higher rainfall over the last few months and the resulting rise in the level of water at the hydroelectric power plants in Brazil's Southeast and the Central-West are turning the need for a new rationing scheme into an ever more remote possibility. The statement was made Wednesday (Apr 8) by Minister of Mines and Energy Eduardo Braga during a public hearing at the Senate.

“The need for energy rationing has become a more and more remote possibility, despite the water crisis and a volume of water below that of 2001,” Braga said, referring to the year in which an energy rationing scheme was implemented.

According to the National Operator of the Electric System (ONS), the dams in the Southeast and the Central-West showed an average storage level of 30% on Tuesday (7). These regions account for nearly 70% of all of the country's energy generation capacity.

“We're keeping the country's power availability and consumption curves under close scrutiny every week. In the first quarter of 2015, compared to the first quarter of 2014, we had a 1.8% fall in consumption, which shows that the population is becoming more aware of the need for a better use of electric energy in a bid to avoid wastage,” Braga noted.

The minister argued for the diversification of the country's energy sources. “We'll become competitive in distributed generation, which will enable us to launch, in the second semester, a major distributed generation program [...]. We're about to see significant innovations in that arena,” he said.

Braga seemed optimistic about a solar energy production developed by the government using floating equipment in lakes. “If it works, Brazil will be capable of producing solar energy in amounts equal to or higher than a new power plant,” he explained. This kind of technology has been the subject of studies in some countries.

The generation of wind energy in the Northeast was also mentioned by the minister. Eduardo Braga said Brazil is among the world's biggest wind energy producers. By 2020, the country is expected to rank second or first for that type of production, he said.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira