Long-term forecasting of household and residential electric customers in Brazil

The long-term electric power demand forecasting is based on a set of basic premises that includes the macroeconomic scenarios, the growth of the population and of the number of households. The latter is the main determinant to calculate the number of residential customers served by the utilities. This paper presents the headship rate method and its projections for the number of households in Brazil for the years 2010 and 2020. These projections are based on the long term forecasting of the age pyramid of the Brazilian population provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In order to forecast the number of residential customers in the next ten years, the projections for the number of households are combined with the goals established by the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency (ANEEL) for universalization access to electricity.