Review of REN 482 should be completed by the beginning of 2021, says Bárbara Rubim

The Vice President of GD of ABSOLAR (Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy), Bárbara Rubim, participated this Friday (05) in Solar Talks, an online event promoted by Aldo Solar, which had the participation of Canal Solar. During the webinar, she commented on the prospects for the review of REN 482 and said that the conclusion of the process should not take place beyond the first quarter of 2021.

“A ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) has already collected all the contributions it had to receive from the sector, a stage of the process that ended in December of last year. Now, it is analyzing all these contributions, which were more than 180. Then, it will decide whether to maintain, from a regulatory point of view, the proposal it presented on the October 15th, 2019, which was outrageous, in my opinion, or whether it will review the proposal and administratively bring some other solution to the sector from a review point of view”, said Bárbara, adding that, despite not being officially suspended, REN 482 some deadlines were suspended.

According to her, after the new proposal from ANEEL for the amendment of Normative Resolution 482 – which disregarded the main benefits of distributed generation, such as the postponement of investments in electricity transmission and distribution systems and the relief in networks due to the neighborhood effect – there was a mobilization of society against the agency's measures, which cast doubt on the future of the photovoltaic solar energy sector in Brazil.

“Consequently, this mobilization reached Congress, which has been involved in the review of REN 482 since last year. In this case, there is a strong predisposition in Congress for the matter to be resolved through a law and not through a normative resolution. However, the reality is that Congress, like any other public administration body, is only looking at issues related to the pandemic and post-pandemic, such as economic recovery and rescue measures”, explained the vice president of GD at ABSOLAR.

As an association, the ABSOLAR is maintaining a constant dialogue with members of parliament to discuss solar energy. “We have meetings throughout the week with several members of parliament. We talk not only about the perspective of 482, but also about the perspective of economic recovery, as we believe that renewables can play an essential role in the recovery package. In addition, we are maintaining a dialogue to maintain the topic of a bill to defend the DG sector more broadly, so that this can, in fact, begin to be processed as soon as Congress returns to its normal activities”, highlighted Bárbara.

She also believes that the ANEEL will wait for Congress to approve a bill for the sector as far as possible, which would be by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. “So, if they do not approve a bill by March 2021, the agency must release a new regulatory resolution, which will undoubtedly not be as beneficial as a bill coming from Congress, since the ANEEL has adopted a position that the proposals must be supported by a public policy framework. In this case, it would not have the authority to support this public policy and, therefore, would have to make a decision with a shorter transition period”, he concluded.

New rule for GD

Before the coronavirus impacted the photovoltaic energy sector, it was expected that the law with new rules for distributed generation in Brazil would be approved by July. However, according to André Pepitone, CEO of ANEEL, the measures will be postponed.

For the vice president of GD at ABSOLAR, Bárbara Rubim, the expectation is that Congress will approve a bill for the distributed generation sector by December 2020. “If Congress resumes operations in August, which is the current forecast, we should have a bill approved by the end of the year. If the pandemic peaks again and things close down again, this outlook could be extended. The external scenario could impact the functioning of Congress for more months, thus making it difficult to approve a bill,” commented Bárbara.

So far, federal deputies Beto Pereira (MS-PSDB) and Lafayette Andrada (Republicanos-MG) have presented bills to establish new rules for distributed generation consumers. All proposals were made urgent, but will still be discussed by the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate.