Neoenergia's investments in technology and grid expansion are reflected
in the quality of the services provided to its 15.6 million clients. In the
second quarter of 2021, the distributors Coelba (BA), Celpe (PE), Cosern (RN) and Elektro (SP and MS) maintained the indicators DEC (Equivalent Duration of Interruption per Consumer) and FEC (Equivalent Frequency of Interruption per Consumer) framed in the forecast of the National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL), demonstrating the positive result of the company's strategy. With the beginning of the group's management in its newest
concessionaire, Neoenergia Distribuição Brasília (DF) showed an evolution of 18% in the DEC from April to June of this year.
One of the technologies used is the self-healing system, which relies on equipment equipped with intelligence to isolate sections affected by eventual problems - often external factors, such as falling tree branches, for example - and repair them in an automated way. Thus, the supply can be reestablished for the largest possible number of customers in up to 60 seconds. In all, the company has about 13 thousand reclosers, of which 17% have the system, installed in 472 municipalities. As the DEC and FEC indicators measure the failures occurred in the grid, the expansion of self-healing is one of the main factors that reflect in the good performance of the group's companies.
Coelba registered DEC of 10.82 hours in the second quarter, below the regulatory limit, which was 13.68, and lower than the same period last year, when it presented 12.53. The company had FEC of 5.19 from April to June this year, also lower than Aneel's forecast (7.56) and of the second quarter of 2020 (5.73).
At Celpe, the DEC recorded in 2Q21 was 12.38, while the maximum indicator of the regulatory agency was 13.27. The frequency of interruptions, calculated at 5.55, was also lower than the agency's forecast, which was 8.11.
Cosern's DEC in the period was 7.89, better than the regulatory limit, which was 11.35, and the registered FEC was 3.08, below the 7.53 established by Aneel. Elektro presented DEC of 7.53 - while the regulatory limit was 8.15 - and FEC of 4.38 - lower than the regulator's target, which was 6.19.
Despite still being above the regulatory limit, at Neoenergia Distribuição Brasília it is already possible to see the positive impact of the company's management model. The period from April to June 2021 was the first quarter fully under the company's management and the DEC was 8.50, better than the indicator for the same months last year, when it showed 9.14. With preventive maintenance and investments in technology, more than 400,000 interruptions in supply were avoided.
The companies' Capex in the first half of 2021 was R$ 1.8 billion, of which R$ 1.2 billion was for grid expansion, which includes services such as the construction of new substations and distribution grids in all concession areas, reinforcing the electrical system in these locations and providing more reliability and safety. The resources also include the installation of network automation equipment, such as self-healing, and modernization, among other investments.
Innovation is a strategy that goes beyond the grids and also includes other areas of the distributors, such as the remote management of grids and substation equipment. For this, Neoenergia has a Smart Grid Management Center (Cegri), located in Salvador, at Coelba's headquarters, from where more than 75 thousand devices are already monitored - including telecommunications and grid operations and equipment such as reclosers, meters, sensors and intelligent transformers.
The control of the field teams' activities is also done in an automated way by means of software, which allows for faster fault prevention and solution activities. The group is developing in the SISCON (Neoenergia Control System) project an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) solution that should integrate asset management and GIS (Geographic Information System). This is a global trend that, when its implementation is concluded, will be in Coelba the largest solution in data volume among the electric energy distributors in the world.