By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s national power grid operator ONS lowered its forecast for electricity demand in February, projecting a deeper annual decline as weaker consumption expectations in the country’s largest market outweighed increases elsewhere.
The Operador Nacional do Sistema Elétrico, known as ONS, now expects total load in Brazil’s interconnected power system (SIN) to average 87,482 megawatts in February. If confirmed, that would represent a 1.8% decline from the same month in 2025, compared with a 1.7% drop estimated last week.
The revision was driven mainly by the Southeast/Center-West subsystem — Brazil’s biggest consumption hub — where ONS now sees demand averaging 48,582 megawatts, implying a 5.0% year-on-year fall. In its prior update, the operator had forecast a smaller decline of 4.3%.
In the South, however, ONS raised its load estimate to 16,048 megawatts, which would still translate into a 4.5% annual contraction. The previous forecast had pointed to a steeper decline of 5.7%.
The outlook improved in the Northeast, where demand is now projected to average 14,560 megawatts, implying an 8.2% increase from a year earlier, up from the prior estimate of 7.9% growth.
ONS also slightly increased its forecast for the North, raising expected load to 8,291 megawatts, which would represent a 7.5% annual rise, compared with 7.3% growth estimated previously.
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