Robson Rodrigues – De São Paulo
In a new round of financial contributions, GDSun has just received R$325 million from Itaú BBA for the construction of new photovoltaic plants in Brazil. The new investment reaches the mark of BRL 1 billion of invested capital since 2020 with a target of 220 megawatt-peak (MWp) in the first quarter of 2023.
The company operates in distributed generation (DG) or its own generation of remote self-consumption solar energy in Brazil. The new funding adds to the contributions made previously by the Franklin Templeton Alternatives and Servtec Energia fund, with R$500 million in quity in 2020, followed by a debenture leverage from Itaú that injected R$175 million.
Currently, the company has 104 MWp operating in 41 plants with energy destined for large customers, such as Claro, Raízen, among others. To Valor, the CEO of GDSun, Arthur Sousa, says that the company is present in nine states and now the new frontier for business expansion is the Northeast and Midwest in order to add another 116 MWp,
totaling 82 projects in 12 States.
“The costs of equipment, inverter modules are locked and this guarantees cost management with the head and guarantees future purchases with suppliers”, says Sousa. The executive adds that the company has already signed contracts with Alexandria and other companies for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work, has about 50 MWp of solar equipment in inventories purchased from Canadian Solar, in addition to others. 50 MWp in the manufacturing process.
He does not disclose the rates of the new contribution, but recognizes that given the macroeconomic situation in Brazil, with interest rates climbing, the conditions of the first funding with Itaú were better than the current one. “The conditions were not the same at the time of the first fundraising, but given the current market conditions it was a good deal”, he says.
Like other companies in the sector, the sanction of the legal framework for own energy generation, in January, aroused a sense of urgency for the development of new projects in this area in the country to guarantee the free charging of the tariff for the use of the distribution network.
“These 220 MWp are within the regulatory window with access opinion. We worked so that this investment was carried out and the energy traded within this regulatory window”, he says.
With the new funding, the company is quickly positioning itself as an important player in distributed generation in Brazil, as GDSun has been doubling in size year after year, in 2021 the installed capacity was 50 MWp, which rose to 104 MWp in 2022 and 220 MWp in the first quarter of 2023. By 2025, the executive plans a new expansion cycle in order to reach a capacity of 440 MWp.
The strategy for this new capture, however, is yet to be defined, but the challenges are posed. The recent rise in the costs of renewable generation projects and the pressure on Chinese production chains for photovoltaic generation have caused a slowdown in the closing of large long-term energy contracts.
On the other hand, solar generation in Brazil has been gaining prominence in the electricity sector, driven by small-scale projects that fit into distributed generation, totaling 12.9 GW of installed power, according to data from the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel).
The president of the Brazilian Association of Distributed Generation (ABGD), Guilherme Chrispim, recalls that the distributed generation segment has been attracting investments and that in 2020 and 2021 DG was the source that most added installed power in the Brazilian electricity sector and, in 2022, this scenario must repeat itself.
“Another fact that explains the interest of investors in distributed generation is the maturity that companies in the segment have reached in recent years. Given all this context, the tendency is for DG to attract more and more interested parties”, predicts Chrispim.
Fonte: VALOR ECÔNOMICO – 30/AGO/2022 POR Robson Rodrigues
Comments