Aneel should deny extra adjustments to distributors due to the pandemic

A Aneel (National Electric Energy Agency) must deny requests for extraordinary review of electricity tariffs requested by 6 distributors due to losses during the covid pandemic. The process began to be analyzed this Tuesday (26th March 2024), but was interrupted by a request for a review from director Hélvio Guerra.

The case’s rapporteur, director Ricardo Tili, presented a vote denying the claims. The process analyzes the economic losses of concessionaires due to the prohibition on suspending energy supply due to default during the pandemic for low-income consumers.

The distributors presented imbalance values ​​that would not have been covered by the Covid Account, a loan taken out from the financial market to help energy companies during the pandemic period.

The financial rebalancing requests analyzed were made by the following distributors:

The requests were made based on an Aneel decision from March 2022 that set a percentage of irrecoverable revenues referring to 2020 revenue for the calculation of economic balance and analysis of possible loss of revenue due to the increase in default.

For Aneel’s technical area, the values ​​requested are not very significant compared to revenues so that they could be considered as an economic-financial imbalance, which would require a more comprehensive assessment. The technical analysis also understood that the Covid Account helped companies’ cash flow and was sufficient to cover the impacts.

The severity of the cases was analyzed, considering the average monthly cash flow of the concessionaires of the amounts invoiced and collected, including with the Covid Account. Through the analysis, it was found that the average difference between what was invoiced and what was received by companies was smaller because of the amounts received through the credit operation.