Largest Solar PV Manufacturing Facility In Brazil To Date Inaugurated
The 180-megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing facility in Valinhos, São Paulo — now the largest such facility in the whole of Brazil — was recently inaugurated in a service put on by Globo Brazil.
With the completion of the quite large PV manufacturing facility, the country’s domestic solar PV project market should get a boost. With more locally made solar PV panels available, development costs should go down.
The new manufacturing facility is expected to be able to produce roughly 2,000 solar PV panels a day once at full capacity. The new facility has directly resulted in the creation of roughly 240 new permanent jobs, and a fair number of indirectly created jobs are expected to result as well.
An attorney for Globo Brazil, Flávio Manuel Coelho, commented: “The Brazilian energy matrix, fuelled mainly by hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants, is disabled and has an extremely high cost. Inserting a solar source will allow Brazilians to have access to energy at lower costs and with increasing security.”
A point well taken. The country is in the midst of a great many cascading problems caused by the ongoing drought, including issues with hydroelectric generation levels.
In related news, the Brazilian Energy Research Agency recently announced that it has approved 649 new potential solar energy projects (altogether totaling 20.9 gigawatts of potential capacity) to compete in the country’s upcoming Second Energy Reserve Auction, which is currently set to be held on November 13, 2015.
Related: Story Of Solar & Social Inspiration From Brazil (Video)
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book
Our Latest EVObsession Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
” …recently inaugurated in a service put on by Globo Brazil…”
TV is not yet a recognized religion, even in a Brazil addicted to telenovelas.
The reason international companies are building pv manufacturing plants in Brazil is protectionism – you need a high local content to access low-cost loans from the giant state development bank BNDES. The economics of many projects are predicated on this, so local production is the effective constraint on solar growth in Brazil. Since these plants are small by world standards – see the story on Silevo’s typical plant in New York, planned ultimately for 1 GW a year – the unit cost must be fairly high.
Brazil is not alone. But India’s local content policies are much less restrictive; SFIK at least half the huge total programme is open to imported modules. There isn’t much of a constituency for free trade in Brazil. The conservatives represent local businesses, the socialists unionized workers in Sao Paulo. They compete to buy votes from the truly poor with welfare and public investment.
This 180 megawatt facility is very important if Brazil want to develop and control all the aspects of its own PV industry, but with an ambitious target of over 20 gig in solar energy, They need to build a lot of PV panel facilities as soon as possible, Otherwise, the chinesse will end up getting all the money