The Ceará Energy Company – Coelce, now known as Enel Distribuição Ceará, is a company that operates in the generation, distribution, transmission, and commercialization of electric energy.
The name Coelce is still what counts on the Brazilian Stock Exchange. In total, the company serves more than 4 million consumer units located in over 180 municipalities.
The company is controlled by Enel Brasil, which holds 74.05% of the total capital, as well as 97.91% of the voting capital of Coelce. Listed on the Brazilian stock exchange since 1995, Enel Distribuição Ceará operates as an electric energy distribution company, headquartered in Fortaleza.
In other words, the company operates in all 184 municipalities of the state of Ceará, covering a total area of 148,825 km². Because of this, the company is classified as the third largest distributor in the Northeast Region when it comes to the volume of energy sold.
In 2012, the Brazilian Association of Electric Energy Distributors (Abradee) considered Coelce to be the best electric energy distributor in Brazil. Basically, the company's structure is composed as follows:
In addition, the service segments of Enel Distribuição Ceará are subdivided into: residential, rural, commercial, institutional, and industrial.
Parent Company Enel
Enel is a private company in the Brazilian electric sector, considered the largest in its segment. This is because the company operates throughout the energy chain, with activities involving generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization of energy, as well as energy solutions.
With a network of four distributors in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Ceará, and São Paulo, Enel provides energy to about 17 million residential, industrial, commercial, rural, and public sector customers.
The company is a leader in solar energy generation, mainly in installed capacity and project portfolio. Basically, Enel is among the largest wind players in the Brazilian market and, in addition, operates the largest solar plant in Brazil, Nova Olinda, located in the state of Piauí.
Moreover, the company has:
Small Hydroelectric Plants (PCHs)
Hydroelectric Plant in Goiás;
Combined cycle thermal power plant (gas and steam) in Ceará.
As a result, the company ranks as one of the largest electric energy companies in the Americas, with a broad portfolio of energy generation plants, operating in 12 countries – from Canada to the Central Andes.
The company also supplies the largest cities in South America, such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Lima. Finally, Enel has been producing electricity in Morocco and South Africa since 2015.
Enel Distribuição Ceará, formerly known as Companhia Energética do Ceará (Coelce), was founded in 1971, after four electric energy distribution companies in Ceará merged.
Initially, there was the Cariri Electricity Company (CELCA), the North-Central Electrification of Ceará (CENORT), the Northeast Electrification Company of Fortaleza (CONEFOR), and the Northeast Electrification Company (CERNE), which, after unification, formed the Ceará Energy Company.
In 1998, Coelce was privatized and is currently controlled by the holding company Enel Brasil. The company is listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange, where Enel holds 56.6% of the total capital and 91.66% of the voting capital.
After the unification of the four electric energy companies in Ceará, Coelce became the only electric energy distribution concessionaire for the municipalities of Ceará. Initially, the company was structured with 228 distribution networks, 6,077 km of electric lines, and 30 substations with 190.5 MVA of installed capacity.
After focused actions on the company's expansion process, Coelce had already doubled the number of substations and, as a result, had 676.0 MVA of capacity, 806 km of distribution networks with 470.1 MVA of installed capacity, in addition to serving more than 670,487 customers.
Currently, the company's activities are supervised and regulated by the regulatory agencies ARCE and ANEEL.
