EN 
PT_BR 
To the new compensation rules, established in Law 14,300, which exclude the tariff components of TUSD (Distribution System Usage Tariff) for new DG (distributed generation) projects, officially come into force from this Saturday (7). This law became popularly known as the “taxation of the sun”.
With this, the Brazilian consumers who want to install solar energy systems to keep within current GD rules (distributed generation) have until 11:59 pm this Friday (6) to file the access request of your projects with dealerships.
A Law 14,300, published in January 2022, established a transition period that guarantees the maintenance of current rules until 2045 for those who submit the request by the end of today, January 6, 2023.
From this Saturday, whoever files requests for solar energy generation with distributors will have to pay the fare - what is calculated based on the amount of energy that is injected into the grid, with this percentage being applied gradually until 2028.
The change foreseen by the new legislation caused – and continues to provoke, even with the deadline already at the limit – a race of consumers and solar energy integrators in the search for requesting access opinions.
This Thursday (5), the Solar Channel received information from industry professionals reporting that the CREA-SP website would have returned to instability due to the volume of ART (Technical Responsibility Note) emissions.
Extension of the new rules
The photovoltaic sector even tried to extend the deadline for the new rules to come into operation for another six months (instead of January 6th to July 6th, 2023) through the PL 2703/22.
The movement began after several consumers and integrators reported that several concessionaires had purposefully hindered the approval of solar system projects during the transition period of Law 14,300.
PL 2703 was initially approved in the Chamber of Deputies at the beginning of December, but it was not voted on in time in the Senate before the parliamentarians' recess at the end of the year.
ABSOLAR (Brazilian Solar Energy Association) reached demand measures from ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) against electricity distributors.
The entity claimed, for example, that the websites of CEMIG, COELBA, EDP and Energisa had been taken offline so as not to respond to requests from consumers who wanted to send access reports for their solar energy projects.
What to expect ahead?
According to energy experts, interviewed by Solar Channel, even with strong complaints from the photovoltaic sector, the installation of solar energy panels in the DG segment will remain attractive over the next few years, even with the reduction in the benefits of current rules.
For Bernardo Marangon, managing partner of Exata Energia, the change in the law will not make GD's growth unfeasible, even with the fact that its clients will lose, on average, a third of the return on their investments compared to the current rule.
According to him, the investment of customers who generate and consume energy in the same location – which currently represents around 80% of the volume of installed projects – will remain viable, and that the simultaneity factor, which varies between the various consumption profiles , will be an important factor in calculating the viability of these projects.
“On the other hand, investment in remote DG will suffer more because, normally, those who invest in this type of project seek to offer savings to their customers. Furthermore, it does not have the simultaneity factor that mitigates the impact of changing the compensation rule, as it needs to inject all energy into the grid”, he commented.
Also according to Marangon, the payback will not have a relevant change if the investment is in 2023, due to the staggered non-compensation of wire B, but “if the client delays they will lose each year, so as soon as the investment is done better”, he pointed out.
Roberto Caurim, CEO of Bluesun, believes that the sector needed a document that would guarantee legal security for companies operating in the area. For him, the legislation could be better, but without it it would be worse.
“At any moment, GD could be ended with the stroke of a pen and not today. We can even go to court against a distributor with much more property, because we have a law that protects us”, he argued.
The executive also revealed that, since the beginning of the week, Bluesun started to make a platform available on its website for calculating the payback of photovoltaic systems, already in compliance with the rules of Law 14,300.
According to him, in some cases it was even possible to notice that the return time on system investments was equal to or even shorter than in relation to current rules.
“We came to the conclusion that slightly smaller photovoltaic systems, around 10 kWp, in several cases, were cheaper with the new law than with the old law, because they will no longer have an availability rate. In other words, no longer having the minimum tariff, the payback is now lower than before for these types of consumers”, he said.
Caurim also stated that in the coming years, the forecast is that the price of electricity will continue to increase, making investments in solar energy even more attractive for the consumer.
This is because, according to him, the sector will not stop growing from now on. As a result, the cost that Fio B would bring to the market would become much lower than the investments applied to GD in the coming years.
