Aneel rejects Enel's request for expert examination in concession annulment proceedings

Aneel (Brazil's National Electric Energy Agency) rejected on Monday (24) a request for an independent expert assessment filed by Enel SP in the context of the proceedings examining the forfeiture of its concession. With the decision, the distributor moves to the final stage of the proceedings' instruction phase and will have ten days to present its closing arguments.

Widespread blackouts caused by storms that struck the city of São Paulo and surrounding areas between 2023 and 2025 lie at the root of the proceedings conducted by the federal regulatory agency, which is examining the possible termination of the contract with the energy distribution concessionaire serving the metropolitan region of the state capital.

In response to the rejection of the expert assessment, Enel reiterated its request, arguing that the matter involves complex issues encompassing meteorological, operational, statistical and regulatory aspects, particularly regarding the impacts on consumers.

In addition, the concessionaire maintained that an external expert assessment would be necessary to ensure the impartiality of the procedural instruction, given that Aneel simultaneously performs the functions of oversight, instruction and adjudication and should therefore not base its decisions solely on submissions produced by its own technical staff.

Aneel, in turn, rejected this interpretation and stated that the accumulation of these functions does not represent an exception, but rather an inherent characteristic of the institutional model of Brazilian regulatory agencies. In other words, it is a competence legally attributed to the agency, and the reports, technical notes and opinions prepared by its staff constitute legitimate instruments for administrative decisions.

On this point, Enel states that it does not question Aneel's independence, competence or legal powers. The request for an expert assessment, according to the concessionaire, aims to deepen the analysis of complex technical aspects, such as the exceptional nature of the December 2025 climate event, its effects on electrical infrastructure and the application of criteria not yet regulated for events of this nature.

However, the agency also challenges Enel's intention to discuss the severity of last year's storm — a circumstance already acknowledged by the oversight body itself. Aneel states that it is assessing the preparedness, response and service restoration capacity demonstrated by Enel.

For the agency, the central issue is to determine whether the concessionaire had an operational structure compatible with the obligations inherent in the provision of an adequate public service.

Next steps

With the denial of the expert assessment, the board considered the instruction phase of the proceedings closed. Enel SP was then notified to present its closing arguments within ten days, a stage that precedes the agency's definitive deliberation on the recommendation of concession forfeiture.

Enel concluded its statement by saying that it "will present its closing arguments within the established deadline and will continue to demonstrate, before the competent authorities, the evolution of its operations, the investments made, the improvement of quality indicators and compliance with the obligations set forth in the concession contract and the recovery plan submitted to the agency."

In broad terms, the concessionaire's main argument against the forfeiture concerns the validity of a performance target imposed by the regulatory agency. To identify Enel's failure, Aneel used the criterion of restoring service to 80% of consumers within 24 hours following severe weather events. However, Enel argues that this benchmark was never a standard included in the concession contract.

According to the defense, the metric was merely a technical suggestion from 2024. The company cites that the agency's own board acknowledged a lack of consensus on this index in April 2026. In the distributor's view, the penalty cannot be based on criteria that do not carry the force of a regulatory rule.

Enel has also been arguing that the restoration metric for similar events was not met by other distributors either. In a presentation at Aneel, the company's representative, Hugo Lamin, stated that a survey of the 33 largest distributors in the country identified 129 occurrences between 2023 and 2025 in which that threshold was not reached. The cases involved 24 distributors, equivalent to 73% of the companies analyzed.

The defense also points to what it describes as an error in the agency's calculations regarding the concessionaire's performance during the blackout of December 10, 2025.

On that occasion, a storm with winds of up to 98 km/h left 4.2 million customers without power in the capital and surrounding areas. Aneel concluded that Enel restored service to only 67% of customers within the first 24 hours. The company disputes this figure. It argues that the agency used the "simultaneous peak" methodology, which records the moment of greatest interruption.