Centro de Documentación OLADE -

The COVID pandemic will accelerate the changes that Latin American utilities have to make in order to deal with structural issues stemming from the irruption of Renewable Sources of Energy (RSE) and Distributed Energy Resources (DER). Intermittent RSE, and now increasingly, photovoltaic distributed generation (PVDG), as well as electric mobility (EV), have emerged as tangible threats to the vertically separated electric utility legacy model adopted in Latin America during the 1990’s. Unlike traditional thermal or hydro generation, intermittent RSE and DER require increasing network and operational (System Operator or ISO) flexibility from both supply and demand (demand response or DR and demand side management or DMS) to accommodate steeper (up and down) ramps resulting from more intermittent RSE coming off and on-line as they take on a larger share of the electricity supply. This policy brief sets forth the four key challenges that electric utilities face in Latin America in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. Further, the brief concludes with insights on the directions that both companies and regulators should take to address the 3 Ds: decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization.