Solar Energy Potential and Time of Use Tariffs: a study case for São Luiz do Paraitinga

Abstract

Brazil has one of the highest solar energy potential in the world, but despite of that, both distribution companies and consumers does not take advantage of it as a whole. Aligned with this there is an increasing interest on improving the consumers’ knowledge and perception of energy costs. Brazilian electricity regulation conceived, during the last 7 years the entire regulatory framework needed to promote and support solar energy use and reformulated tariffs structures enabling the introduction of time-of use (TOU) tariffs to low voltage consumers in 2018. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of both changes on an electricity market. That is the article´s main goal, to understand the potential and impact of solar energy and TOU tariffs, for residential consumers using computational intelligence techniques and statistical analysis.