If I had come to your company in 2016 and told you that, by 2026, you would be throwing away 8.888 French loaves of bread every month, you would probably have called me crazy. But that's exactly what's happening. Except the bread doesn't end up in the trash. It appears on the electricity bill.
Between 2016 and the tariff in effect in 2026, Enel São Paulo's energy costs accumulated an increase of approximately 79% in low voltage. A company that paid R$ 10.000 per month in 2016 may be paying something close to R$ 17.918 today. That's almost R$ 8.000 more per month. In French bread rolls at R$ 0,90 each, that's 8.888 rolls per month. In the trash.
It doesn't have to be a bakery.
It could be a clinic, a store, a restaurant, a gym, a small market, a service company. Replace the bread with your product: consultation, meal, monthly fee, piece of clothing, technical hour, production margin. The name changes. The loss is the same.
Why did energy leave accounts payable and go into the board of directors?
For a long time, energy was treated as an unavoidable expense. The bill arrives, someone checks the amount, pays the bill, and life goes on. Those days are over.
Energy has become too expensive to continue being treated as "just another company expense." Today, energy is a cost, a risk, an operational issue, a matter of security, cash flow, and strategy. A wrong decision can be costly for years. A right decision frees up cash, protects revenue, and provides the security for the company to grow.
What I see every day
What we see most often is companies paying more than they should without having any idea why. They open the electricity bill, check the total, and pay. Nobody reviews the contract, questions the classification, or compares alternatives.
Along with that, I see poorly designed solar systems, sold haphazardly by people who just wanted to close the deal. I see operations shut down at the first peak of heavy rain. Critical equipment plugged directly into the wall socket, without any protection. And small businesses being treated as just another number by giant structures that have neither the time nor the interest to look at each case individually.
And what's most worrying: many business owners continue to accept their energy bills as if there's nothing they can do about it. But there is.
Energy can be analyzed, planned, reduced, protected, purchased more intelligently, generated on-site, stored, and managed. The decision-making process needs to move beyond automatic options.
Energy needs to be on the owner's table.
Not at the bottom of the expense list. On the desk of the owner, the CFO, and the operations manager. At OBH Energy, our job isn't to sell solar panels, batteries, UPS systems, BESS, or the Free Energy Market. It's to understand the impact of energy within the company—how much it costs, how much risk it represents, how much waste exists, and which solution makes sense. And, most importantly, to prevent business owners from buying the wrong solution just because someone offered a good price.
Small and medium-sized enterprises deserve the same level of technical and strategic attention that large corporations receive. Perhaps even more—because, for a small business, a wrong decision weighs much more heavily.
Who wants to throw away 8.888 loaves of bread every month?
I don't want that. And no business owner should accept that as normal.
The opinions and information expressed are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the author. Canal Solar.
