Brazil’s electric power watchdog Aneel denied the request for a precautionary measure filed by FRV X Pecém Energias Renováveis to secure priority access for its green hydrogen project to the basic transmission grid.
With a production capacity of 400,000t of ammonia per year and a projected investment of 27 billion reais (US$5.4 billion), the H2V Cumbuco plant is expected to be installed in the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex, in Ceará state.
According to the regulatory agency, the technical infeasibility of access for this consumer unit under the terms of the request submitted to the National Electric System Operator (ONS) became clear, which resulted in the impossibility of serving the load.
FRV was challenging ONS’s decision to prevent its project from being kept in the queue of access requests pending analysis, after denying an initial connection request due to constraints in the power grid.
On that occasion, the ONS argued that the decree that established the National Policy for Access to the Transmission System (PNAST), in December 2025, prohibits guarantee mechanisms for access opinions (GPA) for future margins.
For FRV, the operator is confusing the GPA maintenance mechanism with the expression of interest in future capacity, which has a different purpose and requires a specific guarantee – the expression of interest guarantee (GMI).
Aneel understood, however, that the operator’s decision was correct, noting that the decree does not provide for the maintenance of mechanisms to guarantee priority, either in terms of GPA or GMI.
“This is because, if these priorities were maintained, it would not be possible to organize the access seasons in such a way that all competitors would have the same conditions to compete for access,” justified director Willamy Moreira Frota in his vote, which was accepted by the agency’s director-general, Sandoval Feitosa Neto.
Access seasons are a mechanism that replaces first-come, first-served rules with batch analyses, with selection based on technical and competitive criteria.
They will take place at least twice a year and will involve competitive processes only at the points in the network where there is more demand than outflow capacity. The first must take place by October 2026.
(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)
