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| José Marcos Bressane, EPE |
By Natalia Margarido (Poli-UPS) and Kim
Smet (SEAS)
After ten days of intense lectures and site visits all the pieces of Brazil’s energy system finally fell into place with meetings at EPE and ONS in Rio de Janeiro. The earlier portion of the course focused on the different power generation sources, providing detailed technical information such as turbine types, capacity factors and efficiency. Today, these individual pieces were constructed into the bigger picture, looking at overall system operation and future planning.
At EPE, we had the opportunity to
hear about the energy plans for Brazil in the coming decades and were
introduced to some of the research that is conducted there. In particular, the
future plans to increase wind power generation were an interesting case of
complementarity: wind is strongest in the dry season making it a perfect
addition to the current hydropower-reliant energy matrix.
ONS constitutes the day-to-day
decision-making agency responsible for running the integrated power system.
From a NASA-like control room, engineers use the output of hydrologic and
optimization models to provide specific instructions regarding which power
sources should be producing energy on any given day and at what capacity. The
ongoing energy shortage in Brazil added additional gravity to our visit,
raising questions about the future reliability of the system.
Despite only spending 22 hours in
Rio de Janeiro, we managed to squeeze in a quick walk on the beach and had some
great sightseeing from the bus. So while this certainly was not a long enough
visit, we got a brief glimpse of
life in this vibrant city.
Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Engineering, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Natália is a 6th-year undergraduate student in Environmental Engineering, Poli-USP - Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo
