The Latin American photovoltaic market is entering a different stage, with projects increasingly polarized in size and much tighter execution schedules , a scenario that opens new opportunities for tracker providers capable of responding with immediate availability and volume.
Under this scenario, Soltec , a pioneering tracker in the region with a presence since 2013 and participation in projects for more than 10 years, predicts that Brazil will enter a new phase of deployment, driven by the maturation of the market and with Chile as the main regional reference for the development of large-scale BESS projects.
“In two and a half years, Brazil will be like Chile, with all the lessons learned from being the first country in the region to implement BESS on a large scale and in a very coordinated and even democratic way with the different players, both the legacy ones and those that are arriving,” stated Vinicius Gibrail, LATAM General Manager of Soltec .
“Based on our expertise, solar trackers not only increase the annual production of a photovoltaic plant, but also generate synergies with BESS systems. By extending the hours of useful generation, they can optimize the sizing and utilization of storage, reduce the degradation associated with operating cycles, and improve the profitability of the hybrid asset,” the company added.
That is one of the main projections of the executive, in dialogue with Energía Estratégica in the framework of The Smarter E South America, who placed the Brazilian market as one of the next protagonists of the deployment of BESS systems in the region.
Both countries are at different stages of their development curve. Brazil, on the one hand, is preparing to move forward with its first specific battery auction , after more than a year of defining and revising the contracting mechanism.
Private interest already offers a signal about the potential scale of the business. Brazil reached 296 GW registered for its first BESS auction , a volume that exposes the magnitude of the portfolio interested in competing for storage opportunities.
Chile, on the other hand, is in a more advanced phase of deployment, with over 10 GW of BESS power between projects in operation (2.7 GW), testing (3.2 GW) and construction (5 GW); in addition to 29 GW in different phases of environmental processing.
This journey makes the Chilean market, where Soltec has been present since 2013 (and in Brazil since 2014), a practical reference point for anticipating part of the Brazilian evolution and, at the same time, a learning space for companies that are beginning to participate in storage projects.
“Right now we are discussing a project with an EPC contractor from Spain, which will be their first project in Chile and their first project with BESS worldwide. So it's a testing ground,” said the company's LATAM General Manager.
How is Soltec's regional strategy being completed?
Soltec's commitment to LATAM also includes other areas, including distributed and centralized generation, with offices in São Paulo and Santiago de Chile , while in Salvador it has a plant and a logistics warehouse.
The next step involves expanding the footprint in the Southern Cone and the Andean region , incorporating new offices and increasing the space allocated to logistics and equipment availability.
Within this positioning, solar trackers continue to be the core of Soltec's technological proposal , through different configurations adaptable to each geography and project, including 2P and 1P single-row and double-row trackers , in order to respond to different requirements of developers.
Furthermore, the firm has its own controllers and algorithms for its solar trackers and directly manages core aspects of the hardware , supply chain and technological development, which allows it to "guarantee availability and assume contractual commitments without fear of making a mistake" according to Gibrail.
Another new feature of the regional agenda will be the creation of a specific business unit for spare parts for already installed solar trackers , with which Soltec will serve the park currently in operation in a dedicated manner.
“Not only are we going to create a business development front focused on spare parts, that is, the aftermarket for all the equipment we have operating in the market, but we will also be the first to develop distribution channels for our spare parts,” Gibrail elaborated.
This move will be accompanied by investments in inventory, logistics capacity and expansion of territorial presence, along with a structure prepared to capture new opportunities in markets such as Argentina.
At the same time, the company identifies a polarization in the size of photovoltaic projects appearing in Latin America , with less presence of the intermediate scales that were previously common.
“We see a polarized scenario. On one hand, small projects of 50, 80, 100 or 150 MW (the typical 200 to 250 MW projects are hardly seen anymore). And on the other extreme, large projects of 700 to 720 MW,” described Gibrail, referring to the experiences already given in prominent developments such as Panatí, Marangatú, Pedro Leopoldo and Futura , the latter with more than 720 MW .
Under this scenario, the physical availability of equipment becomes more important in the face of increasingly compressed execution schedules , which place greater demands on suppliers.
“Right now we are negotiating a project where, if we sign in two weeks, by the third week we already have to supply 50 MW of solar trackers ,” Gibrail stated, describing the challenge as entirely feasible and assuring that the company is prepared to respond regardless of the volume.
“We are just getting started, we have made a lot of progress in a short time and there is room to grow much more; the industry needs to get excited,” Gibrail concluded.