Os connection requests for systems solar energy, carried out between the months of October 2022 and January 7, 2023 by consumers who sought to remain outside the rules of Law 14.300, represented a volume of 32,3 GW.
The numbers, which were released by ABRADEE (Brazilian Association of Electricity Distributors) during the regular meeting of the ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency), show that 31 member associated with the entity received around 486,5 thousand connection requests in the last three months, being 460 thousand microgenerationo e 26,5 thousand of minigeneration.
Em microgeneration were 7,06 GW of projects, while in minigeneration were 25,23 GW. This entire volume of projects represents almost double Brazil's current installed power, which stands at 17 GW.
To Eduardo Tobias, managing partner of Watt Capital, the news of the 32 GW in orders in the last three months is very positive. “It highlights the strength of the distributed generation sector in Brazil”, he commented.
However, according to him, it is natural that many of the 26,5 minigeneration projects that requested access will not be made viable within the period necessary to maintain the old compensation rule.
“For them to be viable, it will not be enough to have available connection margin, which will already be a major filter. Projects that obtain an access opinion with low investment demand for network reinforcement and connection will have a greater chance of success. Furthermore, the supply of suppliers and labor for engineering, installation and construction scopes has been a bottleneck in several geographies,” he said.
The professional also highlighted that there is the challenge of availability of capital to build them. “A large part of these orders were made by regional project development companies. Many of them do not have the resources for construction and are actively looking for investors to provide capital or even acquire the projects.”
Still according to Tobias, “there is a lot of interest from investors in projects with viable access opinions. Therefore, we expect many fundraising and project acquisition transactions this year. In fact, Watt Capital has just been mandated exclusively by an international strategic investor precisely to prospect and negotiate the acquisition of minigeneration projects of at least 1 MW, for shared generation or remote self-consumption.”
