In Brazil, about two-thirds of electricity installed capacity and over the last fifteen years, on average 90% of energy consumed has come from hydropower generation. The hydro system includes 170 medium and large hydropower plants in integrated operation today or planned to be operational by the end of 2023, about two-thirds of them have large storage capacities to regulate flows. Environmental, technical, social and economic constraints have made it increasingly difficult to project and build new reservoirs with large storage capacities. As a result, newly built hydropower plants are mostly the run-of-river type. To better understand the process, this paper presents a historical survey of the installed capacity of hydropower and storage capacity of the system since 1950 and extends to the planned expansion over the next eight years, through 2023. Data from 2000 and projections through 2023 indicate a significant reduction of relative regulating capacity, which has a direct impact on decisions regarding operation and expansion of the complementary thermal system. In order to assess the possible consequences of the reduction in regulating capacity, simulations were performed on HIDROTERM model (ZAMBON et al. 2012); the simulation results point to a continuous need for complementing the hydropower generation, not only on hydrologically unfavorable years.
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