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Brazil eliminated daylight saving time. It’s having second thoughts.
Brazil’s energy authorities have approved a plan to return to daylight saving time in an effort to reduce energy usage as the country has been coping with reduced hydropower output from persistent drought, Reuters reports.
The plan, which would move clocks forward an hour between November and February, still needs approval from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva before going into effect. Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro abolished daylight saving time in 2019.
Hydroelectricity is Brazil’s main power source, accounting for over 60% of installed capacity in the country. Drought conditions may last until at least Nov. 30, Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA) said in early August.
At that time, water levels were already so low in River Madeira that officials began to recommend limiting hydropower in Northern Brazil, just like last year. At the time, the Electric Sector Monitoring Committee (CMSE) suggested using more thermal energy sources, importing electricity from neighboring Paraguay and Uruguay, and shifting energy consumption away from times of peak demand.
River Madeira powers two of Brazil’s largest hydroelectric plants, Santo Antonio and Jirau. Located in Porto Velho, Santo Antonio has a capacity of 3,580 MW. Jirau, in the state of Rondonia, boasts 50 75 MW turbine-generator units, granting it a total installed capacity of 3,750 MW.
In late July, Brazil’s federal water agency declared a water shortage in the Madeira and Purus basins. The following day, Acre state declared an emergency amid an impending water shortage in its main city. These declarations came more than two months earlier than last year, when the bulk of the Amazon basin suffered its worst drought ever recorded.
The level of water in the reservoirs of Brazil’s southeast/center-west hydroelectric system ended 2022 at about 50% of capacity, double what they were in 2021, per national grid operator ONS. The southeast/center-west system is the country’s main hydroelectric generating region, accounting for 70% of national reservoir water storage capacity, according to BNamericas.
(Washington post)