| Work Detail |
Installed at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) by Professor Ricardo Rüther, current coordinator of the universitys Strategic Solar Energy Research Group, the system continues to operate at about 80% of its nominal power. The studies carried out at the plant contributed to the creation of regulations for distributed generation and the credit compensation system.
On the central campus of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), the first photovoltaic system in Brazil was installed 26 years ago, brought to the country by Professor Ricardo Rüther in 1997. The generator was mounted with a 2 kW inverter from the brand German Würth Elektronik (later replaced by one from SMA) and 78 32 W photovoltaic modules from Phototronics Solar Technik.
The system continues to operate at approximately 80% of its original nominal power and its installation began the debates and studies that culminated in the creation of Normative Resolution 482/2012, which regulated the energy compensation system and the rules for the electricity segment. distributed generation in Brazil.
One of the precursors of solar energy in the country, Professor Ricardo Rüther was the one who brought this first photovoltaic system to Brazil in 1997, after completing a postdoctorate in Solar Energy Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, Germany.
“Part of the institutes scholarship functioned as a research grant (scientific funding) that provided for graduate students to take photovoltaic equipment to their home countries to continue their research,” Rüther explains to pv magazine . He brought to Brazil a 2 kW generator that is still working and which, in September of this year, celebrated 26 years of uninterrupted operation.
Challenges in installing the countrys first solar generator
The team arrived by plane upon Rüthers return to the country. “As the donation of the photovoltaic equipment was directed to the Federal University of Santa Catarina, the rector had to sign the term accepting the donation and the solar generator was installed in the university laboratory,” explains the researcher.
Without specific funds to install the system, it was the researcher himself and other students at the university who carried out the installation. “There were no companies that could install it because no one had done it before. Since I had spent a few days at Phototronics before returning to Brazil, I was able to visit the facility and learn some of the installation procedures. “We fixed the modules ourselves to a metal structure we had made to measure, fixed the inverters to the walls and made all the electrical connections on the fly.”
Once the installation was completed, the group asked the energy concessionaire to connect the photovoltaic system to the electrical grid.
“At that time it was not allowed to connect a photovoltaic generator to the public electricity grid, but we also obtained the first access ruling in Brazil, through an authorization signed by the president of Centrais Elétricas de Santa Catarina (Celesc), which is the distributor here. in Florianópolis, because in 1997 it was not allowed. The president of the company authorized the university to connect the experimental research system to the public electrical grid, which was a milestone at that time and also consolidated me as a young researcher at the university,” says the professor.
Inauguration ceremony of the first photovoltaic system in Brazil. Professor Ricardo Rüther with the rector of the UFSC and the German consul in Brazil.
Rüther spent another three years as a postdoctoral fellow until he came first in the universitys public competition and was hired in 2000. “I did not become a professor at UFSC until February 1, 2000. For three years I was in a precarious situation as a scholarship recipient, having to renew the scholarship every year and demonstrate the performance of the generator,” he says.
Brazils first all-solar concert
Since the photovoltaic system was installed, UFSC had been talking to Greenpeace about sustainable actions to draw societys attention to solar energy, a safe, clean, renewable and abundantly available energy alternative.
“We had obtained a donation from the State and Municipal Energy Development Program (Prodeem) for an off-grid system and a battery storage system to install the photovoltaic system on a satellite island of Florianópolis, where the Santo Fortress is located. Antônio de Ratone, a tourist place where energy was supplied by a diesel generator. In order to carry out the installation on the island, we requested authorization from the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) and we had to carry out an environmental impact study, which lasted a year,” recalls Rüther.
Thats why, together with Greenpeace, they had the idea of ??holding this solar-powered concert on November 15, 1998, 25 years ago. In addition to local performances, Greenpeace managed to bring in the group Jota Quest for a free concert.
“And since the system that had been installed at UFSC was just over a year old, we got Celesc to install a pole next to the stage that was set up for this concert and compensating for the energy that the 2-wire system had generated for a whole year. kW. After the free concert that was held on the sports fields of the UFSC campus for 25,000 people, we took the isolated system to the island,” he explains.
The first photovoltaic system inspired the creation of Normative Resolution 482/2012
After the installation of the first photovoltaic system in Brazil, Professor Ricardo Rüther and other researchers wrote several scientific articles. Ten years later, in 2008, with the participation of Professor Roberto Zilles, from the Institute of Energy and Environment of USP, who installed the second photovoltaic generator in Brazil in 1998, months after UFSC, the Ministry of Mines and Energy ( MME) approved the creation of a working group to study the legislation for grid-connected systems.
“We went to Brasilia once a month to hold meetings of this working group for two whole years, from 2008 to 2010. Until we prepared a report in 2010 and, from there, the MME and the National Electric Energy Agency ( ANNEL) drafted Normative Resolution 482, which was published in April 2012. So you see how things take time, right?” says Rüther.
The professor comments that today we have a vision of the economic viability and return on investment of a system, but at that time solar systems were totally unknown. “The amortization of the first photovoltaic generator in Brazil was 42 years. In other words, the systems were so expensive then that the return on investment was greater than the useful life of the equipment.”
At a time when photovoltaic systems were expensive and unknown, or alien, when people visited the UFSC facilities they used to buy solar thermal collectors, which heated the shower water, as recounted in an article by the young journalist Willian Bonner for Fantastic.
Professor Ricardo Rüther comments on the sensation of contemplating his journey from the first system installed in Brazil to the present, where there are already more than 2 million photovoltaic solar systems installed on roofs, facades and small plots. “Everything is the accomplishment of a long work and there were many difficulties at the beginning, but that is the price of being a pioneer. Thats what happens, we take it literally, but sometimes it works out." |
