Brazil Wind Developers May Be Required to Build New Power Lines

Wind-farm developers in Brazil may be required to assume the costs of connecting their power projects to the grid as the nation seeks to avoid further delays in constructing new transmission lines.

A proposed rule will affect developers that win new contracts to sell energy in so-called A-3 government-organized auctions for power projects, Andre Pepitone da Nobrega, director of the country’s power regulator Agencia Nacional de Energia Eletrica, said today at a conference in Sao Paulo.

Brazil is shifting the onus of developing transmission lines to developers from distributors after the utility Cia. Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco failed to connect 26 wind farms in the northeast before a May deadline, Nobrega said. Transmission lines represent about 10 percent of the cost of a typical wind farm, he said.

“We’re doing what we can to avoid a repeat of these delays,” Nobrega said.

Chesf, a unit of state-controlled power company Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA (ELET6), expects to complete the three transmission lines linking about 620 megawatts of wind farms by the end of the year, Nobrega said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Will Wade in New York at wwade4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net