What will tomorrow be like in the photovoltaic solar energy market?

The year 2022 will be historic for the solar sector. We can call it the “year of the decade” because what was installed GD (distributed generation) since Resolution 482 until this year, around 9 GW, we have already managed to double this mark in just one year, reaching 18 GW. What this means?

It means that the sector is growing a lot! Yes, throughout the world, and in Brazil, the demand for renewable energy, especially solar, has been highlighted in all markets and in many media.

The solar sector chain, after the events in China in the first half of the year, greatly felt the lack of equipment, the delay in delivery by suppliers and a large increase in international freight. However, demand has not ceased and with this we see that the sector has everything it needs to continue growing, even in the face of the adversities that we may still encounter.

All of this shows the strength of an expanding market, but with all this demand, it is clear that suppliers from all categories in the solar sector want to focus on Brazil and Latin America in their strategic sales plans. And this creates a scenario of many new entrants, be it boards, inverters, structures and accessories.

That is good? Yes, because we can have purchasing options and, mainly, choose from among the players the one that fits a project and an ideal dimension.

But with all this growth, a favorable scenario for 2022 and with almost 1.4 million photovoltaic systems installed, a question as important as the growth of the area arises: how many of these systems will become the orphans of tomorrow's solar sector?

I say this because in my journey in the sector, since 2018, where I followed the big leap from 2017 to 2018, always with continuous growth, I notice that every year new brands enter the sector and the guarantees always grow from five to 10 years for inverters, from 10 to 12 years and some up to 15 years for plates. But how is it possible to control all these guarantees in a market that grows exponentially?

Yes, this is an issue that the entire chain needs to start debating, as many new entrants who have not even been in existence for five years begin to propose guarantees that often exceed their lifetime and without even having a history of failures. of your products.

I have seen panel or inverter brands that do not even have an official office in the country and offering years and years of linear efficiency guarantees and exchange guarantees, often bringing containers for sales and more sales.

But how can you do this with guarantees if there is no company representative focused on the customer experience and with the responsibility of taking care of all your customers who have purchased photovoltaic equipment?

What will it be like to exchange panels of 340 W or less, which are now no longer in production, if the 10 or 12 years of warranty have not yet passed? Where to seek technical assistance for inverters that are over five years old?

This year 2022 marks the beginning of the 10 years proposed there and, from now on, with the natural degradation of equipment, we will begin to understand whether or not the proposals made were real and we will begin to know the solar sector orphans which, unfortunately, will become a great challenge for brands that already exist in the country, for those that have already left and for those that want to enter.

All these old customers, when using their old contracts, when analyzing their clauses, will look for the integrators who set up their system and will not find them because many on the journey have given up on continuing.

They go looking for distributors and they won't find them because many didn't continue their business, as it's not that simple to be a distributor. And, finally, they will look for the brands they purchased and will understand that many are never actually in Brazil and many even outside of here no longer exist, or they may even exist but their contracts were linked to the distributor who no longer exists.

With this we can understand that installing a solar system is not safe? Of course. It will increasingly become better and more reliable and secure.

What we can define is that the market must, from 2022 onwards, question more about the qualifications of its players and mainly create strategies so that end users who trusted in the promises of 25 years of clean energy production, are the influencers of new projects to be installed.

I understand that existing associations in Brazil and those that emerge should be the protagonists in leading debates on this topic that will certainly occur, as they already do, and define ways of instructing not only installers and distributors, but also developing communication aimed at end users of the chain on how to protect themselves from this and especially how to resolve this impasse when it occurs.

In my point of view, when we reach a mature solar market, we will have to work so that the sector grows more and more with the positive customer experience in mind, leaving customers completely comfortable about the future of their investment.

How to make?

Yes, this is a question that I leave for debate to all of us involved in the chain, but I am sure that the solution will not just be low sales prices to gain in volume that we will have a positive result, but with a lot of training and discernment from manufacturers. that the price must of course contain your profit margins, but it must mainly contain security for those who purchased and the guarantee that there is a parent for each system installed in our immense country of solar opportunities.