RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In 2020, the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) withdrew 1,666 GWh (1 GWh = 1000 MWh), 28.1% less than the amount used in 2021, 11.21% of the accumulated production of the power plant in 2020, a year in which Yacyretá produced up to 10% more than the previous year, according to sources.
Another important fact in the Binationals’ annual accounts relates to the local utilization level of Paraguayan energy in Yacyretá (Art. XIII of the Treaty). In the recently ended fiscal year, 6,684.5 GWh of the plant’s total production belonged to Paraguay (10% less than in 2020), and 34.6% was used by the national electricity market.
The shortfall will enable to determine how much of Paraguay’s energy was supplied to the Argentine market and, through it, also to the Brazilian market. In fact, if 2,314 GWh of the 6,684.5 GWh were used, the logical conclusion is that Paraguay ceded 4,370.5 GWh, 65.4% of the Paraguayan half in Yacyretá.
2020
In the 2020 fiscal year, 7,428 GWh corresponded to Paraguay, given that it used 1,666 GWh, the conclusion is that Paraguay ceded 5,762 GWh that year. In other words, ANDE withdrew 22.4% of Paraguayan energy from Yacyretá and SADI received 77.6%.
Another conclusion is clear: in the last two years, although the rate of local use of Yacyretá’s energy has increased, Paraguay has still failed to take advantage of half of its Binational’s energy share.
The share that Paraguay does not use must be ceded to Argentina, although the Treaty grants it only the right of preference for the acquisition of this surplus, for less than US$10/MWh over the Binational entity’s cost, far from the export values that Argentina charged Brazilian companies for each MWh it supplied in recent months.
STRANGE SINUOSITY
Another striking feature of this ANDE/Yacyretá relationship is the sinuosity of the curve. It began 2020 with the use of 340 GWh, and the following month, February, it dropped to only 123 GWh. In March it increased again, but far from January’s level, 180 GWh, so that in a continuous up-and-down pattern, this share of Yacyretá’s energy use dropped again in April to 134 GWh.
In October last year, the amount of energy withdrawn by the state-owned company from Yacyretá rose again to 333 GWh, before plummeting again in November to only 157 GWh and closing December with 211 GWh. The average local use of Yacyretá’s energy in 2021 stood at 192.8 GWh.