Organ states that the 1st stage of the event, held on Wednesday (19th March), had technical flaws and concentrated results “in a few economic groups”
O (Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Federal Court of Auditors) requested this Thursday (19.Feb.2026) the precautionary suspension of the 2nd stage of LRCAP 2026 (Capacity Reserve Auction in the form of Power). The final phase of the contest is scheduled for Friday (20th March).
The request signed by the deputy attorney general of the MPTCU, Lucas Furtado, asks that the auction be postponed by 30 days “in order to enable the technical reassessment of the parameters” of the dispute. Read the of the request (PDF – 215 kB).
The body also requests the suspension of the results in the 1st stage of the contest, on Wednesday (18th March), to avoid “consolidation of potentially inefficient hiring”. The assessment is that the 1st dispute “concretely highlighted structural weaknesses of the adopted model”.
The Capacity Reserve works as a type of “insurance” for the Brazilian electrical system, ensuring that the country has plants ready to generate energy immediately in times of peak demand or failure in other sources.
In the document, the MPTCU requests that the Court of Auditors determine that the (Ministry of Mines and Energy) and the (National Electric Energy Agency) review the methodology for defining ceiling prices, reassess the competitive conditions of the auction and present a detailed analysis of the tariff impacts and the systemic efficiency of the contracting.
According to the MP, the ceiling prices defined by Aneel were very high and ended up serving as an “anchor” for bids, harming competition. The prices charged at the event indicate that the consumer will pay more than necessary, says the agency.
The request also questions the concentration of results in “few economic groups”. Companies such as Eneva, Petrobras, J&F and Âmbar Energia are mentioned, which together purchased more than half of the power contracted in the 1st phase.
“When such a significant volume of power and revenue is concentrated in a few agents, especially in an environment in which structural restrictions on competition were already identified, it becomes difficult to sustain the narrative of a widely contestable market and an effectively open and isonomic bidding process”says the document.
Another question is in relation to the predominance of thermoelectric energy supply, as highlighted in a survey by the (National Energy Consumers Front).
According to the entity, almost 19 GW were contracted, mostly from thermoelectric plants, with an estimated annual cost of around R$39 billion. This value, according to the Front’s technical calculations, should cause an average increase of at least 10% in electricity tariffs.
