All projects and activities to be developed by the REI-LA will have an information component which will be consolidated in its webpage. This webpage will be linked with the main one (www.ieiglobal.org) managed by the Indian REI.

Training

IEI continues its efforts in creating and growing indigenous technical and managerial capacity to promote the efficient production and use of energy for sustainable development. These efforts consist of fellowship and exchange programmes as well as running training courses.

Fellowships programme
Through the fellowship programme, the REIs financially sponsor students for undertaking post-graduation courses and research linked to public benefits and energy for sustainable development.

The REI-LA has been granting two master students scholarships on the Energy Planning Systems course of the State University of Campinas, Brazil. Herculano Xavier Jr and Paulo Henrique de Mello Sant’Anna are undertaking research, respectively, in energy efficiency standards for refrigerators and energy R&D technological forecasting. Both scholarships are closely tied to two projects carried-out by the REI-LA and described in the Analysis item.

Partnership Sustainable Energy Solutions in North and South
The project is a triangular employee exchange programme for development of knowledge and experience on renewable energy. The project is founded on a long-term cooperation between Sweco Grøner AS (Norway), Tanzania Traditional Energy Development and Environment Organization – TaTEDO (Tanzania) and the Latin American REI. The partnership posts abroad for one year three participants, one from each organization.

Financially supported by Fredskorpset, a public institution subordinated to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project is on its second exchange. The first one started in February 2003 and lasted until March 2004 and the second has already been initiated.

Following the effort in creating and growing indigenous technical and managerial capacity to promote the efficient production and use of energy for sustainable development, the Tanzanian participant being posted in Brazil representing TaTEDO is undertaking a post-graduation on the Energy Planning Systems course of the State University of Campinas (Brazil) analyzing the improvement of household cooking energy through fuel inter-substitution and energy efficiency in Brazil and Tanzania.rogrammes.

Analysis

The REIs are undertaking several activities aiming to generate new understanding regarding the various aspects of energy included in IEI’s mission. These encompass a broad range of subjects, from supply to energy demand, energy efficiency, technological foresight and power sector reforms. Reports and papers have been prepared in which the analysis and conclusions are presented systematically so that the lessons learnt can be used to aid future action.

Collaborative activities with Latin American partners
The REI-LA is continuing the production of country reports in collaboration with Latin American partners in order to assess the impacts of the power sector reforms on the provision of important public benefits, such as on the access to energy by the urban and rural poor, environmental impacts, security of supply, demand side management, public interest research and development and improved customer services.

Following the study evaluating the Argentinean power sector reforms in the nineties via-à-vis public benefits produced in 2003 (available in the website), the report “Power Sector Reforms in Peru and its Implications in Universal Electrification and Deployment of Renewable Energy” is being carried out.

At present, figures show that the level of electrification in Peru is only 75%. The remaining 25% is represented by 7 million households that do not currently count on affordable modern energy. This report seeks to assess the behavior of the process of reforms introduced in the power sector and whether it has had a positive or negative influence on the process of accessing electricity throughout the territory, which has been declared as of national electricity necessity and public good by Law N° 27744. Particular consideration will be given to access initiatives concerning the role of renewables in off-grid applications.

Air-conditioning and refrigerator's energy efficiency standard improvement

During year 2002, REI-LA started a project to study minimum efficiency standards in a typical Brazilian household refrigerator. This project was co-funded by the International Energy Agency - IEA, the Collaborative Labelling Appliance Program - CLASP, and the São Paulo State Research Council - FAPESP. A continuation of this project will be carried out aiming to improve the prior project by gathering additional manufacturing cost and design data and will be supported mainly from the grant received from FAPESP.

Herculano Xavier is a post-graduation student whose master thesis’ objective is to propose a new minimum energy efficiency standard for refrigerators by analyzing possible technological advances.

New tariffs that stimulate load curve changes and end-use efficiency

The REI-LA is collaborating with a power distributor in a project aiming to propose a different tariff for an industrial customer in order to dislocate the power load from the peak periods, reduce the industrial consumer’s tariff and postpone investments by the distributor.

Energy consumption on standby mode project: television consumption on standby

This is a continuation of one-year project started in December 2003 aiming to evaluate the electricity consumption of electrical and electronic equipment on standby mode and their adequacy to the international energy efficiency standards. The current phase aims to measure the television consumption and the output will be a technical report showing the results obtained, the international standards recommendations and technical suggestions to reduce the electricity consumption on standby. Three models of TV sets available in the Brazilian market are being investigated.

Energy technology foresight exercise for Brazil

Activities such as technological foresight are fundamental in supporting the definition of a coherent R&D agenda and their priorities in R&D by developing countries seeking to tackle the challenges of sustainability.

In 2003, the Latin American REI collaborated on a national technological foresight study that had the objective to provide subsidies to the formulation of energy science and technology policy in Brazil as well as recommendations for investments in energy R&D. The study is a Delphi survey conducted by agencies from the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology and coordinated by the Centre for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE).

This study is being used as a case study by the master student Paulo Santana, financially supported by REI-LA, in order to evaluate the Delphi technique as a technological forecasting tool on energy R&D policy.

Advocacy

Standards and Labels for domestic refrigerators in Brazil: Present the results from the REI-LA's recent work. Produce suitable versions of the report being prepared for dissemination amongst the main stakeholders in Brazil.

Continue to collaborate in local and national newspaper, seminars and meetings to disseminate the mission of IEI in Brazil and Latin America.

Action

Demonstration site on solar and wind power
Distributed generation (DG) has been viewed as a way of which can lower costs, improve reliability, reduce emissions, or expand their energy options. DG may add redundancy that increases grid security even while powering emergency lighting or other critical systems. Furthermore, DG is already more competitive in some niche markets such as rural or isolated areas than the grid extension.

This project involves performance monitoring of a solar PV-wind turbine hybrid system and collection of data from a meteorological station installed in the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. The objective is to analyze its performance and investigate its possibilities as a distributed generation system for small consumers, serving as a basis for energy planning studies, including: techno-economic potential and incentive/diffusion, regulation and tariff policies. The data collected from this project have been used by two graduated master students and two scientific initiation undergraduates so far. Furthermore, a local producer of wind turbines is interested to participate in a joint project with REI-LA using the existing installation.

The hybrid system is consisted by a 500W wind turbine and 4 PV panels of 48Wp. To monitor and analyze its performance, a meteorological station was installed to measure the solar radiation, temperature, wind speed and direction.