Brazil modifies financing rules for solar power projects
Brazil’s development bank (BNDES) has drawn up new rules for the financing of the photovoltaic solar energy production chain under its FINAME program.
The new rules relax local content requirement for solar project components, and are expected to come into effect in August 2020.
The current rules contain mandatory local content requirements for all plant components and the conditions are the same for projects, irrespecrive of their different installed capacities, with no distinction between distributed generation and utility-scale projects, for instance, according to a nore by Veirano Advogados, penned by Tiago Figueiró (pictured). In the new model, there will be no absolute local content for components and different conditions will apply for projects with installed capacity of up to and above 375 kW.
Under the new rules, a borrower may choose to have either local modules or inverters, while other components must be local.
Under the current system, all components must be manufactured locally, save for the inverters, which may or not be local, but the new system will allow for two configuration alternatives: Type A, in which all components are local, and Type B, where systems with a production efficiency index of equal to or more than 30 per cent with at least one of the following local components local: modules, inverters or support structures. Other components may be of local or foreign manufacture.
