By Greentech Lead America: Brazilian power regulator
ANEEL has announced new rules to boost rooftop panel sales in Brazil. The new
policies target rooftop panel sales to $3 billion within 20 years.
The new rules allow homeowners and businesses in Brazil
to sell electricity generated during the day by rooftop
solar systems to utilities in exchange for the power they consume at
night. The practice, known as net metering, is expected to make solar energy
more practical for consumers.
Under the net metering rules, power generated by
renewable sources — solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric systems — will
earn credits that utilities are required to accept in exchange for electricity
consumed from the grid.
According to a report in Bloomberg, the country installed
panels with 4 megawatts of capacity last year, mostly in rural areas and plans
to install 300,000 rooftop photovoltaic devices worth $3 billion by 2030.
The new rules issued by ANEEL also offer incentives for
larger solar plants. Projects with capacity of as much as 30 megawatts
will qualify for an 80 percent discount on fees for using power distribution
and transmission systems.
Brazilian panel distributors expecting panel sales to
increase 50 percent annually as homeowners seek to cut their power bills. The
leading manufacturers plan to increase their production as the market expands.
State-controlled companies proposed last year 18 photovoltaic projects with
total capacity of 24.6 megawatts and most of those will start construction by
the end of 2013.
As the new rules are expected to increase the sales,
leading manufacturers plan to increase their production and investments.
Braxenergy Desenvolvimento de Projetos de Energia, a Brazilian renewable-energy
developer, plans to build a $50 million factory to produce solar cells.
Tecnometal Equipamentos, Brazil’s only photovoltaic panel
maker, plans to invest more than $127 million to build a factory that purifies
silicon and another facility to process the material into solar cells.
Smart grid investments in Brazil will reach $36.6 billion by
2022
Meanwhile, Utilities in Brazil will use the smart grid
investments to help reduce electricity theft, improve the reliability of
electric infrastructure, offer new pricing plans for customers and enable
economic growth.