State Grid Pulls Forward 5 GW Brazil HVDC Link to March 2028
State Grid will start operating its 800 kV direct current line between Maranhao and Goias in March 2028, two years ahead of the original 2030 date, Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy said, according to Reuters.
The link runs roughly 1,500 kilometres from the Graca Aranha substation in Maranhao to the Silvania substation in Goias, crossing the state of Tocantins. It adds 5 GW of transfer capacity to the national system.
Sun Tao, chairman of State Grid Brazil Holding, presented the revised schedule to Minister Alexandre Silveira at the ministry's headquarters. The Chinese group won the concession at a 2023 auction, with investment put at around BRL 18 billion. Reuters reported the infrastructure at approximately BRL 20 billion.
The installation licence came from Ibama, the Brazilian environmental agency, on June 2, together with the vegetation suppression authorisations. Permitting is the usual constraint on ultra-high-voltage schedules, and the licence is the gate that made the pull-forward possible.
The line is designed to raise power exchange between the Nordeste, Centro-Oeste and Sudeste regions. Brazil is dealing with operational challenges from the growth of wind and solar and their intermittency. The new capacity should help cut the operational restrictions that force curtailment at renewable plants.
State Grid estimates the asset can serve the energy demand of about 12 million people, including locations in the Centro-Oeste and Brasilia.
For buyers of transmission concessions outside China, the schedule is the number that matters. Long-distance HVDC corridors are routinely late; a state-owned contractor moving a 1,500-kilometre, 800 kV build from 2030 to a first quarter of 2028 start sets a delivery benchmark that competing bidders in auction-based transmission markets will be measured against.
The economics also cut against the assumption that renewable buildout alone clears bottlenecks. Wind and solar capacity concentrated in Brazil's northeast has no value when the network cannot move it south, and 5 GW of additional evacuation is a direct answer to that mismatch rather than an incremental reinforcement.
The Reuters dispatch from Sao Paulo, dated July 16, was written by Roberto Samora and edited by Leticia Fucuchima.