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| Fig. 1: PV installation for fish cooling in the Northeast of Brazil. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Over the past decade, solar power has moved from insignificance to a central role in Brazil's electricity system. This shift reflects the combined effects of factors such as policy incentives, rapid growth in distributed systems, and a steep decline in global photovoltaic equipment costs. In the mid-2010s, solar generation was so limited that it barely appeared in national statistics. By contrast, data from the past two years show it becoming one of the main contributors to annual electricity growth, with clear implications for operations and long-term planning.
The contrast is evident when comparing the country's Energy Research Office 2015 statistical electricity report (base year 2014) to the latest editions. [1-3] In 2014, solar electricity did not appear as a distinct category in the ranking of generation by source; it was grouped within a residual "other sources" category representing roughly 2% of total national production. A decade later, however, solar energy emerged as the third largest source of electricity in the country. In 2024 alone, solar output reached 70,665 GWh, almost 10% of national electricity generation, and expanded nearly 40% relative to the 50,633 GWh produced in 2023. Solar additions also dominated new infrastructure: of the 11.5 GW of new installed capacity in 2024, 10.6 GW came from solar installations.
The 2024 statistical report (base year 2023) highlights two major developments. Solar represented 7.2% of all electricity generated in Brazil, and distributed photovoltaic systems were central to this outcome, accounting for 59% of total solar output. Annual solar generation jumped from 30,126 GWh in 2022 to 50,633 GWh in 2023; a 68.1% increase, the largest growth rate among all energy sources in the country.
The 2025 statistical report (base year 2024) demonstrates continued acceleration. Installed solar capacity grew 28% in a single year, reaching 48,468 MW and surpassing fossil-fuel thermal plants for the first time. Solar generation increased to 70,665 GWh, or 9.4% of total national electricity production. Distributed systems remained key, providing 58% of the year's solar output. The same report notes that solar was a major contributor to the 6.1% growth in Brazil's total electricity production between 2023 and 2024.
A simple way to visualize the significance of recent solar growth is to translate annual electricity generation into an equivalent measure of continuous power. Although solar varies throughout the day (with its capacity factor ranging from 15 to 30% in the country), dividing annual energy by the number of hours in a year (8,760) provides an average power metric comparable to conventional power plants. This helps illustrate how large the solar contribution has become in practical terms. The 2024 continuous-equivalent power was
| 70,665 GWh 8,760 h |
≈ | 8.06 GW |
This is the output a constant 8-GW power plant would deliver over the entire year. The 2023 continuous-equivalent power was
| 50,633 GWh 8,760 h |
≈ | 5.78 GW |
This one-year increase of more than 2.2 GW of continuous-equivalent output is comparable to adding multiple large thermoelectric plants, achieved entirely through modular photovoltaic installations.
This simple calculation shows why solar is increasingly viewed as a structurally important part of Brazil's electricity system. Even without representing real-time variability, the continuous- equivalent metric highlights how much annual energy solar now contributes and why planners treat it as a major resource shaping system reliability and expansion.
Solar is a major driver of electricity
growth:
Solar production has been expanding much more rapidly than the
country's total electricity consumption growth. As a result,
solar is supplying a growing share of incremental demand and
reducing the need for fossil-fuel dispatch during daytime
hours.
Solar expansion in Brazil is dominated
by distributed systems:
Roughly 60% of all solar electricity in 2023 and 2024 came
from distributed systems. This creates a distinctively
decentralized solar profile compared to most countries,
lowering transmission losses but increasing midday energy
concentration.
Transmission expansion is adapting to
new renewable clusters:
More than 4,000 km of new transmission lines were added in
2024, particularly in regions where large solar and wind
projects are concentrated, such as the Northeast of country,
that has seen a dramatic amount of wind and solar systems
(like the one shown in Fig 1). This highlights how grid
infrastructure is being reshaped to accommodate the geography
of new renewable development.
The evolution of solar electricity in Brazil over the past decade represents one of the most significant structural changes in the national power system. What was once too small to be listed as a separate category in earlier statistical reports now ranks among the country's top sources of electricity. Solar generation reached 50,633 GWh in 2023 and 70,665 GWh in 2024, reshaping both daily system operations and long-term capacity planning. The rapid expansion of distributed and utility- scale installations, combined with the scale of recent annual energy contributions, demonstrates that solar power has become a central pillar of Brazil's electricity mix and will continue to influence planning and reliability decisions in the years ahead.
© João Almeida. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Anuário Estatístico de Energia Elétrica 2015, Ano Base 2014," Brasil, Empresa de Pesquisa Energética, Setembro de 2015 [2015 Statistical Yearbook of Electricity, 2014 Baseline Year, Brazilian Research Office].
[2] "Anuário Estatístico de Energia Elétrica 2024, Ano Base 2023," Brasil, Empresa de Pesquisa Energética, 2024.
[3] "Anuário Estatístico de Energia Elétrica 2025, Ano Base 2024," Brasil, Empresa de Pesquisa Energética, 2025.
