Enhancing flexibility and ensuring efficiency and security : improving the electricity market in Brazil via a virtual reservoir model

The Brazilian electricity market has certain particularities that contribute to considerably distinguish it from other markets. With a continental interconnected transmission system in which around 70% of the total installed capacity comes from hydropower plants, this electricity market recently passed through two large institutional reforms and it currently contains a number of special features together with other usual market instruments. Nevertheless, the conciliation between the commercial commitments of the market participants and the physical dispatch is not smooth. Moreover, the Brazilian short-term market is a mechanism to settle differences rather than a market, and the electricity short-term market price and the schedule dispatch are not determined through the interaction between market participants. This paper focuses on these problems, discusses some dilemmas that have to be faced if a more conventional market oriented approach is to be adopted, and proposes a solution in order to address these issues. Pointing towards the enhancing of the flexibility for market participants to bear their contracts, while still ensuring the efficient use of the energy resources and maintaining the current level of the security of supply, this new framework was designed based on a virtual reservoir model