Brazil exceeds 22 GW of solar energy and plans to transfer wind power

In November, Brazil surpassed a new historical mark in the installed power of solar energy, reaching 22 gigawatts (GW) with the sum of the capacity of large-scale plants and the systems for generating electricity on roofs, facades and small plots of land, the equivalent to 10.8% of the country’s electricity matrix.

According to mapping by the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Absolar), from January to the beginning of November this year, solar energy grew 59.4%, jumping from 13.8 GW to 22 GW.

The expectation is that soon the source will exceed the installed capacity of wind energy, currently at 23.2 GW, thus moving to the second position in the Brazilian electrical matrix.

“In the last 150 days, the pace of growth has been practically 1 GW per month, which places the source in the third position of the Brazilian electricity matrix”, informed Absolar.

Growth, however, has been driven by self-generated energy. There are practically 15 GW of installed power from the solar source, which is equivalent to investments of around BRL 82.9 billion since 2012, when this energy began to grow in the country.

The centralized solar source, represented by large projects acquired in government energy auctions, add up to 7 GW of installed power, or investments of around R$ 31.2 billion.

According to Absolar, since 2012 the solar source has already brought to Brazil R$ 114.2 billion in new investments, more than R$ 35.7 billion in revenue for public coffers, and generated more than 660 thousand accumulated jobs.

With this, it also avoided the emission of 30.6 million tons of CO2 in the generation of electricity. According to the president of Absolar, Rodrigo Sauaia, the growth of the source strengthens the sustainability and competitiveness of the Brazilian productive sectors.

“Finally, Brazil has woken up to solar energy and its benefits, whose accelerated growth will soon place the photovoltaic source in the second position of the national electricity matrix”, he said, emphasizing that the source helps to diversify the supply of electricity in the country. , reducing the pressure on water resources and the risk of further increases in the population’s electricity bill.

Deadline

The rush to install solar energy systems is largely due to the agreement signed between the National Congress, the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel) and the sector’s representative entities, which by Law nº 14.300/2022, which guarantees the maintenance of current sector rules until 2045 to consumers who request an opinion on access to renewable own generation systems within 12 months of the date of publication of the law, a period that expires in January 2023.

Delays in the process of granting the opinion, however, led Federal Deputy Celso Russomanno (Republicans-SP) to propose a Bill (2,703/2022) that has been supported by parliamentarians, according to Sauaia, and which extends this deadline for another 12 months.