Paulínia

Brazil's first legal battle over data-centre grid access centres on Paulínia, in São Paulo state. Pahlavan is developing three projects in the city, contracted before the new transmission-access policy to grow from 71 MW to 157 MW of grid use each in 2029. The National grid operator rejected that 86 MW increase as unviable under the new rules. On 6 October 2026 a federal appeals judge allowed ANEEL 48 hours to decide Pahlavan's injunction requests, and stopped fresh awards at the Replan substation pending the decision.

Demand for connections around Paulínia outruns supply. When the policy's first competitive round ran on 6 and 7 October, three data-centre projects absorbed all 228 MW available at four São Paulo connection points, and Pahlavan owned two of them.

Some 110,537 people lived in Paulínia at the 2022 census, about 119 km from the state capital. The city's economy turns on one of Latin America's biggest petrochemical complexes, built around Replan, Petrobras's largest refinery, which opened in 1972 and handles about 434,000 barrels a day, close to a fifth of all Brazilian refining.