Source: Electricidad Magazine

The consultant’s monthly report states that this could happen, taking advantage of the fact that “the tariff study to define the distribution tariffs for the next four years (2020-2024)” is currently under development.

The possibility of studying changes in the measurement periods in the definition of the distribution tariffs for the next four years, raised Systep Engineering in its monthly report, which addressed the suspension of peak hours for this year, due to the conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the consultant, although the control of peak hours “seems to be an effective measure, since at the times when it is applied it lightens the demand of the distribution system, it should be considered that there is a difference between the times when peak demand is measured for regulated customers and the peak demand of the generation system”.

Therefore, the 52 hours of highest demand in the center-north subsystem of the National Electric System last year were analyzed, where “it is observed that all peak demands occur in months outside the period defined as peak hours, concentrating mostly in the first quarter of the year. The latter is mainly explained by the quarantine effect, since the historical trend indicates that peak demands for this subsystem are concentrated in the last quarter”.

In the southern subsystem, 2020 peak demand tends to occur in the months with peak hours of
peak, but off-peak. “This behavior generates a distortion between the withdrawals of regulated customers and free customers. In the past, the CNE has already proposed to homologate the hours in which the peak demand of the system and the demand of each client are determined”, the analysis points out.

According to Systep, the existence of power payments and peak power measurement periods is intended to “rationalize consumption through economic signals, in order to avoid problems of generation capacity or transmission and distribution infrastructure due to an excessive concentration of demand in a single period of the system”.

“In this context, the change in the period of measurement of peak hours to economically relieve customers, although being punctual does not have a major impact on the planning of networks in the long term, it does have an impact on the collection of the distributors, since the tariff structure with which the tariffs are defined has a significant impact on the distribution companies’ revenues.
rates consider a six-month peak period,” it is stated.

In view of this situation, the consulting firm argues the need to address this issue, taking advantage of the fact that the tariff study to define the distribution tariffs for the next four years is currently underway.
(2020-2024), “so it is a good opportunity to discuss changes in the measurement periods, either homologating them to those used in generation, reducing them to the two-month periods that have been used in 2020 and 2021, or proposing a different one”.

It is concluded that the objective of this is “to provide a stable economic signal so that regulated commercial and industrial customers can better manage their demand, as well as so that distributors do not see their revenues modified by decisions to change the peak period due to cyclical situations”.