Developing Brazil’s Market for Distributed Solar Generation

In this working paper, researchers analyze 5,563 municipalities in Brazil and show that demand side factors drive consumer uptake of PV distributed energy generation. This effect is so relevant that municipalities with lower annual solar radiation have, on average, more consumer units of distributed solar photovoltaic generation than municipalities with higher levels of radiation. The analysis is one of the first to examine the decentralized solar generation market at a municipality level in Brazil, yielding unique insights to this emerging industry.