Latin America Protective Relay Market in Electric Utilities - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Latin America Protective Relay Market in Electric Utilities is expected to reach a CAGR of 4% over the forecast period 2021- 2026. The concepts of protection relay systems for operation within a Smart Grid infrastructure is catering as a new trend. According to Smart Energy International, the total smart grid infrastructure market in Latin America will cumulatively be USD 20.1 billion over the period 2018-2027, with smart metering representing just over half of this amount. This represents the high demand in the future smart grid projects.

Key Highlights

• Increasing adoption in renewable capacity additions is driving the market. Latin America and the Caribbean holds enormous renewable energy implementation. IRENA’s recent 'Future of Solar Photovoltaic’ report underlined that the region’s solar energy capacity could grow by the factor of 40 by 2050 to more than 280 gigawatts (GW). Countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic are the regions where the governments initiate to implement renewable power solutions. This implementation further holds a strong demand for the protective relay in the coming future period for the protection of feeders, busbars, and high voltage substations.
• The adoption of the IEC 61850 standard for substation automation drives the market. Early substations comprised of mechanical relays and meters, which barely supported recording and provided no means of the communication. Fault recorders were capturing information majorly in the form of paper charts, so reading and analyzing the information was not a straightforward process.
• IEC 61850 addresses necessary hardware requirements for a substation-grade device and defines a communication language that reduces the amount of wiring in the protection system as all the wires between CTs (Current Transformers), PTs (Potential Transformers) and protection relays can now be merged into one Ethernet cable. The IEC61850 projections are primarily due to the rapid adoption of the standard in Latin America, where large substation automation projects are planned. Eaton provides modern IEC 61850-based substations in Latin America communicating digital information between sensors and relays through Sample Values or GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented System-Wide Events replace the conventional hard-wired logic) protocols. A digital relay also generates and save log, event, and oscillography files.
• However, the impact of COVID-19 is affecting market growth. The diversion of potential investment in P&C (Protection & Control) equipment and other grid modernization equipment, systems, and services will be minor (approx less than 4% lower shipment values in 2020 from 2019 levels) unless the current COVID-19 situation continues to affect manufacturing supply chains in the region. According to IDB (International Data Base), since late March 2020, electricity demand has been decreasing in all countries, showing negative change rates in the two last weeks of March, which further reduces the protective relay demand for those who need to purchase new relay.
• Moreover, for the future project plans, the pandemic provides no harm to the suppliers as well as players. For instance, in April 2020, Enel announced that the pandemic currently poses no material disruption to its renewable project supply chain and expected to meet its 2020 energy targets. The company planned to move forward with its strategy to add an additional 14.1GW of renewables by 2022, which includes projects in Chile and Brazil.

Key Market Trends

Increasing Capacity of Power Generation in Brazil Accounts For Significant Growth

• According to CCEE (Power Commercialization Chamber) Brazil, the electricity consumption in Brazil is expected to increase from 485.28 terawatt-hours in 2019 to 564.17 terawatt-hours in 2023. This consumption holds the demand for electricity generation capacity in powerplant, such as thermoelectric, wind, thermonuclear, etc. Owing to such demand, the usage of protective relay significantly increases in this country.
• The protective relay is designed to trigger a circuit breaker when a fault is detected, and the zones of protection are for generator and unit transformer, station transformer, and to many other components, The portion of a power system is de-energized through the opening of a fault interrupting device that has been operated by a protective relay output.
• The Brazilian electric system, with its large geographical area, is supplied mainly by hydropower plants, which are located on the rivers far from the load centers. The main generation source is Itaipu, which is a bi-national (Brazil & Paraguay) power plant has installed capacity of the 12,600 MW, which provides the need for protective relay for the fault detection.
• Brazilian electric system having more than 1150 transmission lines (greater than 69kV) at 138, 230, 345, 440, 500, and 750kV, linking over 600 substations primarily consider long transmission lines (30km). The highest voltage in use links the Itaipu power plant to the Sao Paulo area by two 565 miles (910 km) with 750-kV AC lines and two 600 miles (980 km) with 600-kV DC lines. To prevent the faulty fluctuations in the AC/DC lines, the demand for protective relay significantly increases in this location.
• Moreover, the 500-kV technology is based on compact transmission lines, self-supporting steel towers and have been successfully used on the Brazilian system for more than ten years and voltage inversion is dealt using positive sequence voltage memory polarized relays while overreaching due to sub-synchronous resonance between line and capacitor compensated for Zone 1 (when enabled) by means of a security factor.
• Further, to improve the voltage support and effective power generation with least fault generation GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions business announced the Static Var Compensator (SVC) technology (providing dynamic voltage support with controlling the efficiency of the power supply) milestones in March 2020. The SVC enables the utility to operate at 115 kV and supply from +50 Mvar to -25 Mvar.
• It has improved network reliability and voltage performance in the area such as Santa Barbara D’Oeste, Brazil that operates at 440kV and supplies +/- 300 Mvar of power compensation. The SVC at Santa Barbara D’Oeste is one of the largest solutions delivered by GE, which assists in the applications of the traditional protective relay.

Thermal Powerplant Accounts for Significant Growth in Argentina

• Argentina generates its electricity using thermal power plants, which is based on fossil fuels (60%), hydroelectric powerplants (36%), and nuclear plants (3%), while wind and solar power accounted for less than 1%. There are around 9.5 GW of thermal power plants in the pipeline and planning stages in the country. These projects are worth around USD 9.92 billion and are expected to come into operation by 2025. With its pipeline projects, the demand for protective relay significantly rises in the future period.
• Players such as Central Térmica Ezeiza has aimed to increase its thermal plant capacity to 150 MW. The Commercial Operation Date (COD) is estimated to take place during 2020, which is being operated by Grupo Albanesi, and the commercial equipment authorization is being provided to Siemens.
• Further, Cutler-Hammer de Argentina (CHA), the formation by Eaton's Corporation and Electro Integral Sudamericana (EISSA) manufactures and distributes electrical equipment in Argentina. CHA includes all of the commercial assets of EISSA, which is being established to manufacture and distribute low- and medium-voltage switchgear, where the relay is most commonly used on medium voltage switchgear applications.
• Furthermore, following the approval of the Technical Department, Fanox Relays have been recently accepted by Edenor with most of the customers in Argentina. These relays (Self Powered O/C & E/F Protection Relay) have been installed in medium voltage switchgears providing automatic circuit breakers, and they substantially improve the electricity supply to customers by quickly detecting and isolating network faults in the powerplant. This added to the already installed relays in the region of Santa Fe, thus achieving the constant spread of FANOX relays.

Competitive Landscape

The Latin America protective relay market in electric utilities is moving towards competitive and fragmented in nature as prominent players in the protective relay market, including ABB Ltd, Eaton Corporation PLC​, amongst others caters the rivalry in providing the product solution as with various new plant projects and purchase of new relays for the old facility, the market emerges to intense competition. Recent developments in the market are -

• November 2019 - The technology group Wartsila and Empresa Generadora de Electricidad Haina (EGE Haina) signed a commissioning agreement that converts the Quisqueya 2 power plant to natural gas operation in the Dominican Republic. Both companies have also signed a long-term service agreement covering all the Wärtsilä power plants that are owned and/or operated by EGE Haina, allowing accurate predictability of spare parts and maintenance costs for the Quisqueya 2, Sultana del Este, and Palenque power plants. The total installed capacity of the three plants is approximately 400 MW. This enhances the demand for the protective relay in the Dominican Republic.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support