The judge in charge of the 10th Federal Court of Belo Horizonte, Guilherme Mendonça Doehler, granted an injunction in favor of ABSOLAR (Brazilian Solar Energy Association) determining that the concessionaire Cemig resume the analysis of budget requests for the connection of distributed microgeneration in the State.
The company had suspended the analysis of the opinions under the pretext of the need to consult the ONS (National System Operator), a measure considered illegal by the association.
The Collective Security Order was filed on May 22 and the injunction was granted nine days later. The court ordered the company to immediately resume processing requests for microgeneration access and issue a notice informing interested parties about the resumption of analysis, indicating the new deadline for preparing a connection budget, within a period of no more than 60 days.
“The preliminary decision obtained in the Collective Security Order against Cemig is an important victory for the photovoltaic solar sector, and will enable the resumption of distributed microgeneration connections in the state of Minas Gerais, ensuring the continuity of the economic activity of companies operating in the segment,” said the ABSOLAR in a statement to members.
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As highlighted by the judge in his decision, the preliminary injunction proved necessary, “as the unreasonable delay compromises the viability of the enterprise and puts at risk the survival of companies that were set up to operate in the electrical energy generation sector, and there is no justification for those replaced by the petitioner remain in this situation indefinitely.”
Like Canal Solar has been reporting, Cemig has been claiming an exhaustion in its network and therefore it will not be possible to meet all the demand in the distributed generation market.
The Government of Minas Gerais itself released a release informing that there were regions in the State where the electrical grid does not have the technical capacity to receive new connections from distributed minigeneration photovoltaic projects (between 75 kW and 5 MW of installed power).
The lack of energy injection capacity in the Cemig network is worrying integrators of solar energy in the region. This is because, without a definition of when the flow capacity of Cemig's substations will be normalized, integrators are unable to provide their clients with an expectation of when their projects can be installed.
In the end, what is happening is that the majority of consumers interested in technology end up not closing the deal, causing losses that compromise the continuity of companies in the sector.
Comments (2)
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Could you please tell me the writ of mandamus number so I can access the decision? Thank you.
This would only make sense if the courts forced Cemig to invest in networks and greater capacity, otherwise it would place the burden of expanding the networks on investors, making the projects unviable.