In three days, 9,000 professionals attended Intersolar South America and the parallel event ENIE, Electrical Installations Exhibition & Conference. Through the parallelism of both exhibitions, the organizers could introduce solar to a new target group. Since the photovoltaic industry is still on a small level, it is no wonder that the workshop “Photovoltaics: Fundamentals and Applications” was packed to the very last seat. The construction of photovoltaic plants and their maintenance require skilled labor in this field, something rarely found in Brazil.
But the interest was not only for fundamentals. The high-level conference with 18 sessions from the “Latin American photovoltaic market” to “Application Technologies for Solar Heating” was packed. More than 500 attendees listened to innovative trends from abroad and about the current and future energy situation in Brazil.
Currently, there are only around 200 small to mid-sized distributed generation systems connected to the Brazilian electricity grid. This is still behind the expectations from ANEEL (national electricity agency) and EPE (national planning authority). While there are still barriers for the net-metering scheme through the taxation policy, solar specific auctions could accelerate the PV installations very soon.
“The outlook is positive”, said Markus Elsässer, CEO of Solar Promotion International “Brazil had its first successful solar auction in December 2013 in the State of Pernambuco, with a total of 122.8 MW contracted. This year, there are very high expectations with the first national solar auction that is expected to contract between 500 MW and 1,000 MW on 31st October 2014. A total pipeline of 10.8 GW of projects have filed to participate in the auction.”
Besides three days of photovoltaic and manufacturing topics the solar thermal market was also discussed on the last two days of the conference. The market for solar thermal products in Brazil is one of the top markets worldwide in terms of new installations and is growing very fast. In 2013 there was a 20 % growth leading to 1.4 mio. sqm newly installed collector area. The solar thermal sessions were organized by CB-Sol / DASOl-ABRAVA.
More than 71 well-known international and local speakers enriched the conference. Honored guests of the conference were, beside others, Alexandre Comin, Director of the Department of Industrial Competitiveness, Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade and Vice-Coordinator of the Renewable Energies Committee of Plano Brasil Maior, Eduardo Azevedo, Executive Secretary of Energy, Secretariat of Infrastructure of Pernambuco, Jürgen Beigel, Director for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency, German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), and the Presidential Candidate Eduardo Jorge, from the Brazilian Green Party.
According to Klaus W Seilnacht, CEO of FMMI GmbH and one of the organizers of Intersolar South America, this year's exhibition and conference met the needs to expand the discussions on the Brazilian energy matrix. "Brazil faces serious challenges with regard to its energy matrix, caused by the rising demand for energy due to the rising prosperity and the expected population growth, with, at the same time, issues with hydro power, caused by prolonged drought. The power supply and its extension cannot be ensured anymore. And a country this size, privileged to be bathed in sunshine almost all year round is able to enter the total solar energy at its headquarters", said the executive.
Intersolar South America in 2015 has already set date: 1-3 September 2015, at Expo Center Norte, in São Paulo, SP.
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