Brazil begins exporting energy to Argentina amidst the heatwave in South America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After the worst hydric crisis in 91 years, Brazil is now exporting electricity to Argentina, informed Estadão/Broadcast the general director of the National System Operator (ONS), Luiz Ciocchi. According to him, earlier this week, Argentina requested the import of 150 megawatts (MW), then 300 MW, rising to 500 MW, 1,000 MW, and now 1,500 MW, which were supplied for a few hours to the neighboring country.

“Despite the help we gave, it was not possible to hold some incidents; it was not enough because of some other structural problem in Argentina, a peak problem because of the heat,” Ciocchi said.

Last year, during the drought, Brazil imported electricity from Argentina to guarantee supply. “One of the things that work well here in the Southern Cone is the Brazil-Argentina-Uruguay energy integration,” Ciocchi said.

Amid an intense heatwave, which exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, a power outage affected about 600,000 users in the north and south of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area last Tuesday, January 11. Service was interrupted after electricity demand exceeded 27,000 MW.

Because of the high demand, as happened with Brazil last year, the Argentine government asked on Thursday to reduce energy consumption in industry and public administration bodies to avoid blackouts like last Tuesday. But, according to Ciocchi, the Argentine crisis is quite different from the one Brazil went through in 2021 because of the water crisis.

“The situation that Argentina experienced recently does not have the same characteristics that we experienced here, which was a more structural crisis, from the point of view that here it was a water crisis. The problem in Argentina was the very high temperatures, which made the air conditioning consumption go out of the curve, a huge peak in energy consumption,” explained Ciocchi, noting that there was also a problem in the operation of a power plant in the neighboring country.

The energy exchange between Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, has long been used successfully by the three countries, Ciocchi said. Just like last year, the two countries will be able to export energy to Brazil again this year, during the dry period in the Center-South (April to October), since the current crisis in Argentina is punctual.

“This exchange -this import and export- is routine, and both countries, Uruguay with less intensity, can be activated at any time; we are always in contact,” informed Ciocchi.