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The 10th edition of the event grew in number of exhibitors and visitors. The need for companies to reinvent themselves and professionalize to overcome the first year without significant growth in the market was highlighted by the novelties presented and the topics discussed at the stands, including the diversification of businesses with storage and electric mobility and manufacturing venue of different teams.
Even in a year in which the solar photovoltaic generation market does not seem to be experiencing significant growth, the sectors main fair continued to grow. The tenth edition of Intersolar South America was the largest in history, with 530 exhibitors and 50 thousand visitors in the three days of the event (in 2022, there were 400 exhibitors and 44 thousand visitors). In the halls and stands of the fair, held last week, a certain caution was mixed, new for a sector that has experienced exponential growth year after year, with the usual effervescence at these events.
On the one hand, the market is not expected to grow significantly in 2023. On the other, repeating last years feat of adding 11 GW would still be enough to put the country back among the worlds top PV markets this year.
In the whole of 2022, 8.2 GW of distributed generation (GD) and 2.5 GW of centralized generation (GC) were added. By August 2023, another 8 GW of solar power has already been installed: 5.2 GW of DG and 2.8 GW of GC.
Sources interviewed by pv magazine during the event believe that 2024 should also repeat this level of new installations and that growth should pick up from 2025.
In fact, in the long term, there is still much room for expansion of the source, which currently represents 15% of the national electricity matrix, with more than 33 GW accumulated, 23.2 GW of them in distributed generation and 10.4 GW in shared generation.
“There are 91 million consumer units and only 3 million benefit from DG”, stressed the president of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Absolar), Ronaldo Koloszuk, at the opening of the Congress.
Subscription model and larger plants
Although sales of small rooftop systems fell in the first half of the year, the market for larger distributed generation projects is heating up. Plants larger than 75 kW can still be connected until early 2024, with licenses under the regulation prior to Law 14,300, which is more advantageous for shared generation.
Pay-as-you-use projects, which have become more popular, generally fall into this modality which, despite representing only 2.67% of DGs installed capacity (622 MW out of 23.2 GW), already corresponds to 9.88% of the consumer units that receive credits (300,000 of 3 million).
In 2023 alone, 88,000 new consumer units began to receive shared generation credits, from 2,000 systems, with an average of 44 consumers and 60 kW per plant, according to Aneel data. Greener estimates that the modality has the potential to attract 40 billion reais until the end of 2024.
Self-production projects or those that serve new consumers who will be able to migrate to the free market starting next year should also gain traction.
Consolidation and professionalization of the market
The smaller distributed solar generation market, which has historically led the Brazilian market – with 18 GW of distributed generation in systems of less than 75 kW (up to 74.99 kW), especially suffers from the lack of financing competitive.
This market has strong pressure on prices, which creates an impasse due to the recent drop in the cost of modules, on the one hand, and the equipment stocks of distributors, on the other – the sources heard by pv magazine speak of between 2 GW and 4 GW.
The country manager of JA Solar, Fernando Castro, affirms that as the price of the modules has dropped from about 0.25 US$/Wp a year ago to the current 0.16 US$/Wp, the equipment distributors who bought when prices were even higher, they are being pressured to match the drop in costs, and are even being forced to close sales with negative margins.
This scenario could lead to consolidation and a reduction in the number of distributors and integrators in the sector. The assessment is that, to overcome this moment, companies will have to professionalize, either by using more digital and specialized tools, or by reinventing themselves to offer new solutions to energy consumers in the different models of distributed and centralized generation.
Business diversification
In this sense, manufacturers, distributors and companies in the sector presented at Intersolar products and services that diversify their operations and echo concepts such as the ecosystem and integrated energy solutions. That is, in addition to photovoltaic generation, they offer batteries, chargers for electric vehicles and management, monitoring and optimization services.
Brazil does not yet have a particularly competitive business case for batteries, but that should change in about two years, according to companies heard by pv magazine. Module manufacturers such as JA Solar and Canadian Solar have brought their storage systems. Jinko Solar has already supplied battery systems for three small-scale projects in the country. The rural consumer segment could be one of the first to absorb this new technology, given the availability of incentive loans and the need to improve the quality of the energy supply.
The tax pressure on batteries is greater than 80%, which makes the market unviable, stated the general director of Absolar, Rodrigo Sauaia, at the opening of the Congress. The recognition and remuneration of auxiliary services, via regulation, which could generate extra remuneration and allow the more massive adoption of batteries, which could provide distribution network management services, for example.
Intersolar South America itself will build on these new technologies to continue growing, having announced a new pavilion and a pillar dedicated to electric mobility for the 2024 edition. “We will have four pillars at The smarter E South America in 2024: solar generation, batteries and storage systems, energy management and electric mobility. We are going to launch Power2Drive, which will have a fair, conferences and technical workshops,” said Solar Promotion International CEO Florian Wessendorf.
Following the trend towards diversification, one of the largest equipment distributors in Brazil, Aldo, presented at its stand other business units of the same group, organized under the Decarbonize brand, including Sol Agora, a financing company, and the branches technical assistance and supervision.
Similarly, the Bono group presented the ecosystem made up of five brands in the areas of engineering and projects (Böno Energia), marketplace services (Sunhub), equipment distribution (WHS), asset structuring (Greenfield) and international logistics ( Prime Company). Another example is the Tangipar group, which includes equipment distributor Solar Livre, sales company Lótus Energia, integrator Ilumisol and photovoltaic module manufacturer Sengi.
Local manufacturing
Distributors are manufacturing their own mounting structures and followers, with the advantage of offering the market a solar kit financeable by the BNDES Finame program, using imported modules.
Fortlev, for example, based in Espírito Santo, presented its new Ballast Solar mounting structure, made of polyethylene, which promises a 50% reduction in the construction time of plants on ground or slab. Sou Energy, based in Ceará, presented its fiberglass reinforced polyester assembly structures. MTR, a distributor focused on systems between 1 MW and 5 MW, presented fixed structures, skids and followers of its own manufacture in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais.
At a time when the development of the local industry is once again the order of the day, with the emergence of a debate on which links in the chain should be developed first or be more competitive, two new factories were announced at the fair: Trina Tracker is installing a photovoltaic tracker factory in Salvador (BA) to expand its supply of imported modules.
Also, the Chinese company Livoltek will install a new inverter factory in Manaus (AM).
On the subject of the productive chain, Sauaia said at the opening of the Congress that the country has the potential to be one of the manufacturing centers of the productive chain, "without creating artificial barriers and without annulling the import tax reduction."
Centralized generation
For centralized generation, in addition to guaranteeing access to transmission lines, financing and licensing, one of the main challenges will be creating new demand, Sauaia said. The participation of solar in energy reserve auctions and the supply for the production of green hydrogen, which serves sectors intrinsically difficult to decarbonize, can be new growth vectors for the segment, in addition to the opening of the free market from of 2024. |
