Brazil’s Luz targets digitization boost, 50 new solar parks

Brazilian energy solutions firm Luz plans to step up its digitization drive this year and reach 50 solar parks in operation by the end of 2024, CEO Rafael Maia told BNamericas.

Between 12 and 15 parks are expected to be activated this year, said Maia (pictured).

A first park, located in Ribeirão Bonito, São Paulo state, is in operation injecting energy into CPFL Paulista's grid, in the distributed generation modality. The company's operations comprise the area served by CPFL Paulista in the state, which numbers 234 municipalities.

This year Luz plans to start operations in Brasília and the states of Bahia and Pernambuco, with the goal of reaching national coverage in the coming years, Maia said.

Parent company Delta Energia has not disclosed the investment it is making in Luz’s expansion.

Business model 

The company's business model is based on two pillars.

The first is offering a bill discount for low-voltage residential and commercial consumers, as well as for medium and high-voltage customers, who are made up of retail, services and industrial firms.

Together with the discount, the company provides an app through which customers can track their consumption in a detailed way, managing consumption peaks and having better bill predictability.

For the supply of low-voltage energy Luz relies on shared distributed generation, with one part coming from its own solar parks and another coming from partners.

Maia could not disclose the number of customers using the company's solutions.

“With six months of operation, the market reception was better than we expected and we’re discussing internally how to build these farms faster,” he said.

In an interview with BNamericas last year, Luz founding partner Flavio Catani said the goal was to reach 2,000 customers by the end of 2022 and 100,000 by end-2023.

Technology

Last month Luz started installing smart meters at customers' homes to improve energy management.

The advantage of the Luz meters is that they are able to break down consumption per devices and areas within the household, according to Maia.

The AI software powering the meters was developed internally by Luz's tech team. The hardware is provided by BestDeal, a firm focused on telecommunication, energy and related industries that was acquired in March last year by Delta Energia.

According to Maia, BestDeal's first smart meter prototypes started being developed about two years ago. As part of Delta, the firm is now undergoing a rebranding process that will be made public at a later stage, he said. 

In the meter’s first version, domestic consumption is broken down into six categories: laundry, refrigerator/freezer, kitchen, air conditioning/fan, electric shower, and "other electronic equipment."

In a test with 400 users, some households saw a monthly consumption reduction of up to 30% thanks to the detection of malfunction and waste, according to the executive.

In the coming years the company is betting on a market liberalization that will allow low-voltage customers to choose their energy distributors.

Last year the government published an ordinance allowing all high-voltage consumers, such as large industries and medium-sized companies, to operate in the non-regulated or free market as of 2024. Currently, only consumers with a load of 500kW or more can choose their own supplier.

For low-voltage customers, the market awaits the approval of a bill that brings commercial customers and households into the free market as of 2026 and 2028, respectively.

“We have big expansion plans. The opening of the market is getting closer and closer, and we want to be ready for when approximately 80mn households will be able to choose their power suppliers,” said Maia.