Economic Feasibility of Photovoltaic Micro-Plants Connected to the Brazilian Distribution Grid Facing the Regulation Changes Proposed

Brazil may undergo changes in its distributed generation regulations, including the production of electricity from small solar power plants. The proposed amendment by Regulatory Agency provides for only the cost of energy should be compensated. The costs of services and charges included in tariff should be prorated among all consumers. Consumers already installed and their representative entities contest this proposal in a way that became knew as "sun fees", but there is no scientific work to corroborate these claims. Indeed, the new regulation proposes the end of cross-subsidy, in which consumers without distributed generation pay for charges, transmission and distribution systems used, also, by the consumers who has installed distributed generation. In this paper, a comparison of the economic viability of microgeneration before and after the new standard proposed is carried out. The averages of the electrical demand, energy price and solar radiation in the five geographic Brazilian regions ware used in comparisons. The national averages were also used in the comparisons in addition to stochastic analyses varying the installed power of the micro-plants and the minimum attractiveness rate. The study concludes that there will be no significant changes in the economic feasibility of photovoltaic micro-centrals, but the payback will be extended.