On the night of November 10^th , a blackout happened in 18 of 27 Brazilian states and also affected part of Uruguay and entire Paraguay – regions that are provided by Itaipu hydroelectrical usine. It started at 10:30 PM (local time) and lasted about four hours, affecting 50 million inhabitants. The blackout repercuted in many newspaper websites, like New York Times, CNN and El Pais

However, according to Itaipu directors, the blackout was not due to a failure in the usine, but to transmissions lines, under responsability of Furnas, another of the Brazilian hydroelectrical usines. The director of Electrical System of Paraguay, Mr Luis Alberto Villordo, said “the issue was caused by a short circuit in Sao Paulo state”, spreading the blackout through south region of Brazil.

What happened  to Brazil last night can be a vision of our future in a climate change scenario? I tend to answer this question in an affirmative way. This is an opportunity to discuss the way we use electrical energy nowadays.

The adoption of Smart Grids is almost imperious. We think a lot about roads, bridges and subway lines, but an intelligent electrical network is neglected. There is no reasonable explanation for the absence of policies on this matter. Exception to USA, no other country is developing strategies on smart grids.

Let´s take a look on this excerpt: “These devices would communicate and report to the electric companies at what time your appliance used energy and how much, and use that to charge you more for electricity that you use during peak hours of late afternoon and early evening (175% increase in some countries in Europe).

And the electric company would offset that increase in price by giving up to 90% discounts during the low demand hours (generally between midnight and 5am). This would result in generous increases in electric bills, thus "forcing" consumers to try and save energy by using as little as possible during peak hours”. Sounds good, huh?

When people realize how precious energy is, they tend to avoid the waste. Some studies, made in USA, and published by Brazilian magazine Exame, “when people have detailed informations about their energy consumption, the energy saving is of about 10%”.

Despite the decrease of failures, smart grids offers another advantage: only in Brazil the savings related to this control of energy use and failures are estimated in US$ 3 billion, according to this report made by Eletrobras, Brazilian Electrical Agency.

If you want to know more about it, American economist Alex Tabarrock searched some reports in the Internet about this matter: Smart Grid: put it to work, published by US Energy Department,  Modern Grid Strategy, do National Energy Technology Laboratory, e a Smart Grid Newsletter.

Photo: Fotas.com.br