Homework #3 - Solar Energy Plant

On arrival to the CPFL control center, I was impressed by the sleek, professionalism mixed with the natural pools and greenery, which truly emphasized the goal of the alternative energy control center. We then moved into the Control Room which was fascinatingly reminiscent of the NASA control rooms in movies. From that room, CPFL is able to dispatch maintenance crews to restore power to any customer on their grid. Through new automatic monitoring and calls to customer service, the Control Room knows about grid issues within seconds. Next they showed us the smart metering room where they monitor the electricity use by each customer in order to bill them appropriately. One very interesting demonstration they gave us was of the automatic re-connection of the electric arrays. When one connection hub would go offline, the individual homes and businesses connected to that hub automatically connected to a new hub, ensuring that the metering is never offline for long. Likewise, because of the smart metering system, they could remotely, instead of physically, cut off electricity if a customer did not pay. Another portion of this system that I found interesting was that all the portions of the metering system were mapped, and that they were very concentrated in the regions to which CPFL provided service. This shows that the demand for electricity obtained by alternative energy is present in Brazil.

After viewing the connection aspects of CPFL, we went to their museum in which we learned about the progression of electricity and power plants in Brazil over time. My favorite portion of this museum was seeing the timeline of Brazilian energy that they had above the specimens. Finally, we viewed the electric cars in development. These cars were extremely compact due to the absence of a diesel engine, however this made it so that they could only travel around 120 km on a 6 hour charge, making them nonviable for consumer use. Likewise, there are only 11 charging stations in the state of Sao Paulo, making it hard to refuel. Nevertheless, it was interesting to drive, as you hear virtually no noise from the car, save the tires on the ground.

The next destination of our journey was the solar power plant, which housed both electricity production and solar energy research. It was there that we learned about CPFL's reasoning, from a business standpoint, for putting more resources into alternative energy sources other than solar. Because of the cost and quality of materials that this Brazilian company has to work with, solar has fallen behind in CPFL's production priorities, and they have not put funds into solar until recently. A majority of their energy harvesting is currently done through wind, hydroeletric, and biomass fuels because the cheaper, quality technology is available. Unfortunately, they cannot expand hydroelectric power much more due to conservation efforts for the Amazon River, but they are still growing rapidly. One statistic, if I remember correctly, showed them having over 30% growth in power production and customers from 2014-2015, which is very promising.

Furthermore, I was shocked to learn that their solar power made up for less than 1% of their electricity production in the sunny country of Brazil. The guide, however, explained that their older solar panels are only about 8% efficient, while their less plentiful, but newer, pivoting panels were about 15% efficient. This lack of effective solar panels led the company to seek panels from China, however they found that these panels degraded much faster than average. This is why the research at this facility is pivotal to the betterment of their solar harvesting ability. One final interesting aspect that I had never realized before this trip was that dust accumulated on the panels due to nearby agriculture. After testing the proper frequency of washing, CPFL determined that the panels needed to be washed every 2 months. 

I feel that this trip was very enlightening into the real world limitations of solar energy technology in rising economies such as Brazil's. While we would always like to think that the biggest obstacle in sustainable energy is getting money and motivation, there are many technological limitations as well. Nevertheless, these limitations are solvable through powerful engineering!