INSERTION OF DISTRIBUTED PHOTOVOLTAIC GENERATION IN BRAZIL: A CORRELATION ANALYSIS BETWEEN SOCIOECONOMIC AND GEOGRAPHIC ASPECTS

Marcelle Feitoza Bassi Costa,João Alberto Neves Dos Santos

doi:10.32479/ijeep.8954

Marcelle Feitoza Bassi Costa, João Alberto Neves Dos Santos

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8954

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Abstract

Brazil has relevant regional differences in social, economic, and geographical terms, and the technological development of each region is affected by the dynamics of this inequality. The objective of this paper is to measure the degree of relationship between socioeconomic and geographic variables, with the level of insertion of residential photovoltaic (PV) generation technology in each Federative Unit (FU) in Brazil. The variables selected for this study were: 1) HDI; 2) Residential expenditure on electricity; 3) Number of PV companies; 4) PAYBACK; and 5) Solar irradiation index, based on the Brazilian Solar Energy Atlas developed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in 2006. Five hypotheses were established. The methodology used to test these hypotheses was through the statistical analysis of Pearson's correlation coefficient. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that the solar irradiation index is not a significant variable in the insertion process of residential PV distributed generation around the country; and where the residential expenditure on electricity is higher, are also the places that had the smallest installed PV systems. This may help the perception of the importance of each of the variables to increase the use of PV energy in Brazil.

Highlights

A distributed generation represents a new configuration for the electricity industry
The following variables were selected: (1) The human development index (HDI) of each Federative Unit (FU); (2) monthly residential expenditure on electricity; (3) the number of PV companies operating in the region; (4) PAYBACK expected by the PV system investment, and (5) the level of solar radiation in each region
The statistical tool used in this work was Pearson’s correlation coefficient (RXY) because through this basic technique of descriptive and inferential statistics it is possible to identify the degree of relationship between two variables, and determine which variables are potentially crucial to understanding the phenomenon studied (Rodrigues, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

A distributed generation represents a new configuration for the electricity industry. In 2015, the regulation was improved to make the connection process faster and expand access to distributed generation to a more significant number of consumer units (MME, EPE, 2018). Since it has been a growing insertion of these systems in the Brazilian electricity matrix, especially the generation from photovoltaic (PV) solar energy, which has been the fastest-growing source in recent years. CONFAZ 101/97 and 16/2015 and Law No 13,169/2015 (MDIC, SDCI, DECOI, 2018)

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