page_title: Electricity sector in Brazil
section_title: Installed capacity
hierarchical_section_title: Electricity sector in Brazil / Electricity supply and demand / Installed capacity
caption_attribution_description: Brazil is the second-largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world, and hydropower accounted for more than 70% of the country’s electricity generation in 2018. Brazil’s latest 10-year energy plan seeks to maintain this level of hydro generation while increasing the share of nonhydro renewables, particularly solar. &lt;a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39692" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39692&lt;/a&gt; May 31, 2019
context_page_description: The electricity sector in Brazil is the largest in South America.
  Its capacity at the end of 2016 was 150,338 MW, a 9.500 MW increase on 2015.
  The installed capacity grew from 11,000 MW in 1970 with an average yearly growth of 5.8% per year.
  Brazil has the largest capacity for water storage in the world, being highly dependent on hydroelectricity generation capacity, which meets over 70% of its electricity demand. The national grid is composed 80% from renewable sources.
  This dependence on hydropower makes Brazil vulnerable to power supply shortages in drought years, as was demonstrated by the 2001-2002 energy crisis.
  The National Interconnected System comprises the electricity companies in the South, South-East, Center-West, North-East and part of the North region. Only 3.4% of the country's electricity production is located outside the SIN, in small isolated systems located mainly in the Amazonian region.
context_section_description: Generation capacity in Brazil is dominated by hydroelectric plants, which account for 77% of total installed capacity, with 24 plants above 1,000 MW. About 88 percent of the electricity fed into the national grid is estimated to come from hydroelectric generation, with over 25% coming from a single hydropower plant, the massive 14 GW Itaipu dam facility, located between Brazil and Paraguay on the Paraná River. Natural gas generation is second in importance, representing about 10% of total capacity, close to the 12% goal for 2010 established in 1993 by the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
  This reliance on abundant hydroelectric resources allegedly reduces the overall generation costs. However, this large dependence on hydropower makes the country especially vulnerable to supply shortages in low-rainfall years (See The 2001-2002 crisis below).
  By the end of 2016, the breakdown of generation by source was:
  Source: Ministry of Mines and Energy, 2016
  As summarized in the table above, Brazil has two nuclear power plants, Angra 1 (657 MW) and Angra 2 (1,350 MW), both of them owned by Eletronuclear, a subsidiary of the state-owned Eletrobrás.
caption: Sources of electricity in Brazil, 2000–2018
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