Operador Nacional do Sistema Elétrico

Scarce connection capacity in Brazil is now handed out by competition, and the Operador Nacional do Sistema Elétrico (ONS) runs the contest. Its first allocation under The National transmission-access policy, held on 6 and 7 October 2026, drew 451 MW of qualified bids from seven projects for four São Paulo connection points. Only 228 MW was available, and three data centres took every megawatt: two slots went to Pahlavan, one to Digital DC Brasil.

The new rules reached court the same week. Under earlier contracts, Pahlavan's three Paulínia projects were each to rise from 71 MW to 157 MW in 2029; the ONS judged that 86 MW increase unviable. On 6 October a federal appeals judge set ANEEL, the regulator, a 48-hour deadline to decide Pahlavan's injunction requests.

The ONS was created in 1998 by Law 9,648 as a private non-profit body, headquartered in Brasília. Supervised by ANEEL, it coordinates and controls generation and transmission across the National Interconnected System. Its access opinions, the technical finding that a connection is feasible, fix when large loads come onto the grid; in September 2026 one scheduled Scala Data Centers' AI City campus to connect in January 2028 at 120 MW.