There is a fact that deserves to be celebrated — and understood. On February 12th, the draft of the PDE 2035 (Ten-Year Energy Expansion Plan 2035) was published for public consultation by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and the official planning of the electricity sector has begun to treat distributed generation (solar energy on rooftops and small systems connected to the distribution network) as a premise, not as a footnote.
The document, prepared by EPE, projects strong expansion of this energy produced close to consumption in the next decade and indicates that the outcome depends on the regulatory design. In simpler terms: Brazil recognizes that energy produced "at the point of use," close to where it is consumed, is already a structural part of the system.
Globally, this is still rare. In most countries, due to market design, contracting, and incentives, expansion is dominated by large, centralized projects—easier to finance, contract, and operate under a traditional utilities model.
There are exceptions (Australia and parts of the US) where distributed generation has gained scale and forced the grid to evolve. Brazil enters this conversation with a positive aggravating factor: it is a continental country, and the social value of producing energy close to consumption—with less exposure to bottlenecks and long lead times—tends to be greater.
Getting here was the result of struggle and persistence. The legal framework for distributed generation, enacted during the Bolsonaro administration, brought regulatory predictability to an expanding market and reduced uncertainty.
From there, the topic gained traction in public hearings and national debate. INEL participated in this trajectory of technical advocacy: it insisted that distributed generation is not a "fad," it is distributed infrastructure—with the potential to increase consumer autonomy, accelerate the energy transition, and reduce system vulnerabilities.
But celebrating doesn't mean ignoring the next step. When distributed generation reaches tens of gigawatts, the question changes from "to install or not to install?" to: how does the system operate with this?
The grid was designed for energy to flow "from the power plant to the home." Now it needs to learn how to function with energy also flowing "from the home to the grid." This requires rules for power quality, protection coordination, metering, data, and economic signaling—to avoid improvisation and conflict.
This is where the debate becomes truly important for those who live in cities. The decisive step is to unlock storage and coordination: batteries behind the meter and aggregated solutions can shift consumption, reduce peaks, increase resilience, and make distributed generation more useful to the system.
The point is not to "replace the network," but to make the network work better by rewarding attributes (flexibility, peak reduction, services) and creating mechanisms for revenue stacking in a transparent way.
Consumers notice this in their bill and service: a more rational and predictable tariff, and a more reliable supply. A roof, battery, smart meter, and a well-designed tariff can become a package of efficiency and security—instead of a recurring source of conflict.
If Brazil gets this regulatory and technical design right, it has a real chance of becoming a global benchmark for decentralized energy planning in a continental country — with the citizen, and not just the megaproject, at the center of energy policy.
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