For those who are unable to invest in a photovoltaic system (either due to lack of space or lack of capital), shared generation It is an excellent alternative to achieve the dreamed savings on your electricity bill.
In recent years, many companies have invested in this modality. The business model consists of distributing solar energy credits to a large group of consumers. However, managing hundreds or thousands of customers is a major challenge that will only be overcome with the use of technology.
The challenges and opportunities of shared generation was one of the themes of the II Canal Conecta, a congress held this week by Canal Solar, at the Crea-SP headquarters, in São Paulo (SP).
Einar Tribuci, founding partner of Tribuci Advogados, recalled that there was a huge rush last year to take advantage of the benefits of shared generation before the regulation change. “By the end of next year there will be a lot of plants to be connected, without customers to consume all this energy. This is where marketplaces come in to explore shared generation.”
Marketplaces are technology companies that make the connection between the energy generator and end consumers, a model known as subscription solar energy.
According to Lincoin Romaro, Executive Director of WATTIO, a challenge that entrepreneurs face when thinking about investing in shared generation is knowing how much the energy credit is worth. This will depend on the distributor where the plant is located, when the plant was connected (before or after 14.300/22), among other factors.
“Understanding this dynamic is the first major barrier and it is not easy. For those who are working in the market this is not easy, imagine for the consumer who has never bought energy in their life”, said Romaro.
Shared generation was regulated in 2015 (REN 687/15). However, this market only took off in recent years, when entrepreneurs overcame the barrier of the energy commercialization model.
According to Roberto Corrêa, general director of Congecon, at the beginning the challenge was to build an understanding of what a shared distributed generation cooperative was and how to distribute this energy to the .
As the regulations did not allow the sale of energy, but rather the compensation of credits, the solution was to build the plant leasing model, through a performance contract.
The next challenge for the cooperative model was knowing how to reduce the risk of default, in such a way that it did not affect the obligations of the lease contract or the other of the cooperative.
“We needed to structure a guarantee operation. In the cooperative you have the guarantee level that securitizes the operation, so that you actually bring this default environment into the and you do not run the risk of bringing this default into the cooperative's results. With this, you guarantee that the member is assured that any defaults by other players will not affect him”, explained Corrêa.
Rodrigo Renó Gonzaga, president of RenovaEco, said that creating a DG cooperative involves a very big commitment to the . “The biggest strength at this moment is in us leveraging the cooperative arrangement and using renewable energy as an instrument to leverage this business model.”
“We have to look at opportunities that we are not seeing. But if we organize ourselves together, I'm sure these opportunities will emerge even more”, added Gonzaga.
