As a consequence there were never tight regulatory controls over O&M costs,
construction investments and network assets like there is in the US, and as a consequence
not the need to develop IT support systems for these business processes (typically Work
Management systems). As a matter of fact, the overall industry regulation until the 90’s
was very loose, covering only a few aspects of the society/utility relationship. A
department of the Energy Ministry played the regulatory role, instead of an autonomous
entity like FERC. The Brazilian Electricity Regulation Agency (ANEEL) was created
only in 1996, as part of the sector restructuring and privatization.
Even being a loose regulatory environment, the area of service quality received a special
attention in Brazil since the 70’s, as opposed to what happened in the US. This was
caused by a series of factors, including:
-
The characteristics of the network in Brazil, with a predominance of overhead
networks using naked conductors and long secondary networks, in opposite with
underground networks in the US. This is a much less reliable configuration, so
service continuity was always an issue. Underground networks are much more
reliable then overhead ones, but also more expensive. Underground networks only
justify economically in high load density areas. For reference, the average customer
consumption in Brazil is ten times lower than in the US. A highly urbanized area like
Belo Horizonte, capital of the Minas Gerais State, shows up maximum load densities
of only 23 MVA/km2.
-
The disposition of the regulator to provide customers with a “compensation” for not
being able to transparently regulates rates. After the electricity price, the more
sensitive aspect of the electricity service for the end user is the continuity.
There’s an established procedure to calculate service reliability indexes in Brazil since
1978. This regulation (Portaria DNAE 46/78, 1978) dictates data collection procedures,
calculation methodologies, information disclosure rules, and, last and most important,
service level goals to be met by the utilities, associated with financial penalties for those
goals not achieved. The electric utilities where so faced with the need to automate these
processes, what lead for an early development of Trouble Analysis and Outage
Management systems.
Recently, these rules were revised and republished (Portaria ANEEL 024/00, 2000),
creating new measurements to include not only system average indexes (DEC and FEC,
very similar to SAIDI and SAIFI), but also individual service continuity indexes. The
individual ones measure mean duration, frequency and maximum duration of outages
(DIC, FIC and DMIC, respectively). The utility must calculate these individual indexes
for each customer, and in a short run will need to publish it into the electricity bill, and
provide automatic financial compensation in the following month bill to customers that
had its limits violated.
