The court has ordered Aneel to analyze, within 48 hours, an injunction request from Pahlavan’s data centers, temporarily suspending the allocation of capacity at the Replan substation.
The dispute over space in the Brazilian transmission grid has entered a new legal chapter. The Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) has issued an injunction requiring the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel) to evaluate, within a tight two-day deadline, a precautionary request filed by three Pahlavandata center units. The measure aims to prevent the remaining capacity at the Replan substation, located in São Paulo, from being fully committed to third parties before an administrative decision is reached on the case.
The conflict arose amid the conclusion of the 1st Access Season of 2026, conducted by the National Electric System Operator (ONS). While the Pahlavan One and Pahlavan Three projects were successful in obtaining capacity allocation, the core impasse lies in the company’s quest to expand the Transmission System Use Amount (Must) for its ventures, which were structured under a regulatory regime prior to the National Transmission System Access Policy (Pnast).
Background and the impasse at the Replan substation
Pahlavan argues that its projects already held authorization acts and use contracts when the new access policy took effect. The company is seeking to increase its contracted load from 71 MW to 157 MW starting in 2029. However, technical studies by the ONS pointed to operational constraints and overloads on critical lines, such as the Fernão Dias-Bom Jardim section, in addition to identifying zero capacity on the 440 kV busbar of the Replan substation for the requested periods.
Regarding the need for judicial intervention to ensure that the administrative claim would not become moot, Judge Rafael Paulo Soares Pinto highlighted the urgency of preventing the analysis from losing its purpose:
“The court weighed that there was a concrete risk that the administrative review would take place only after the final capacity allocation, a scenario in which no margin would remain to preserve the interests of the companies involved in the process.”
Impacts on sector regulation
It is important to emphasize that the judicial decision does not alter the progress of the Access Season, nor does it grant priority or early technical reservation to Pahlavan‘s projects. The restriction imposed is purely precautionary: it prevents Aneel from definitively allocating the remaining capacity identified by the ONS while the review request is pending. As soon as the agency issues its ruling, the restriction will automatically lose effect.
This clash reflects a moment of regulatory transition in the national electricity sector. While Aneel seeks to implement mechanisms within Pnast to curb the speculative use of transmission grid capacity, high-demand companies, such as data center operators, are pushing for legal certainty to expand their operations. The outcome of this analysis in the coming days will be an important indicator of how the agency will balance systemic planning against the growing demand for connections to the National Interconnected System (SIN).
