By Marcelo Taborda,
BYD Brazil Sales Director
A rather thought-provoking title, isn't it? But as this conversation unfolds it will certainly make sense, so don't be surprised.
We had a very special week, as on the 22nd and 23rd BYD Energy officially launched its integrated solution for the Distributed Generation market. Strategic partners, employees, the specialized press and the company's president and board of directors gathered in Campinas, São Paulo. The moment was a decisive milestone in the history of BYD Energy do Brasil, the result of a strategy formulated almost two years ago and based mainly on global guidelines for integrated solutions for the renewable energy market.
In this sense, it is worth recalling the history of BYD, a company founded in 1995 by Wang Chuanfu, a highly renowned chemist, who left the Chinese government in pursuit of his dream of bringing an integrated clean and sustainable energy solution to the entire planet. This is how BYD's three green dreams were born, focusing not only on generating clean energy through photovoltaic modules, but also on storing energy through lithium batteries and distributing this energy efficiently and consciously through electric mobility.
Brazil is no different. We arrived in 2015 focused on the decarbonization process and inaugurated our first electric bus and truck chassis factory. Just two years later, in 2017, we opened our photovoltaic module factory, both located in the city of Campinas (SP). In 2020, we inaugurated our third factory in Brazil to manufacture lithium batteries, in Manaus/AM.
As the world's largest clean energy company with almost 300,000 employees and more than 40,000 engineers and researchers, BYD is always investing heavily in Brazil and believes that the country will soon be one of the largest module markets in the world. It is already in the top 10 and will soon be in the top 5 in terms of installed photovoltaic capacity, and expects to grow significantly over the next three decades, whether in the commercial, residential or rural markets.
In this sense, a brand such as BYD, which is a benchmark in the market, is seeking the space it deserves in this market, neither bigger nor smaller. We are aware of the saturation of the photovoltaic segment in some sectors and the recurring questions focused only on price, putting the quality, safety and after-sales of a project that should have at least 25 years of useful life in the background. Perhaps some of you have heard me argue that products are not all the same. Also that our sale is about something we believe in, it's the story of a globally recognized brand that wants, at the end of the day, to deliver a complete solution and offer the customer an identity and only one door to knock on.
This is the icing on the cake. BYD's new strategy is not to act as a distributor of photovoltaic systems, but rather to develop strategic partners in the Brazilian market to bring integrated renewable energy solutions focusing on generation, storage and distribution through equipment such as photovoltaic modules, converters, lithium batteries and electric vehicles. BYD is the only company capable of providing all these solutions under a single brand, as a manufacturer that dominates all stages of this production chain.
In a market as large and promising as the Brazilian renewable energy market, where the number of distributors and sub-distributors in the DG market has grown exponentially in recent years, adding more than 20,000 integrators to their respective customer bases, it is clear that BYD, with its strategic partnerships totaling less than 1% of this total, will not act as a distributor. However, it is necessary for a manufacturer to take a different look at this market, in order to develop partners who recognize the value of BYD's partnership proposal, which in turn goes far beyond generating clean energy, but also provides energy efficiency solutions, where storage and distribution play key roles and are certainly important pillars when it comes to energy efficiency.
During my time at BYD China, I was able to understand what this brand really means and everything it believes in. Above all, I came to understand that BYD is not a company that offers an isolated product, but a brand focused on integrated energy efficiency solutions, thus closing a sustainable energy cycle that always aims to bring the safest and most efficient complete solution to the end customer. In this sense, in more than 5 years with the company, as important as the direct participation in the inauguration of some manufacturing units, the development of new products and solutions, strategic partnerships and the initiation of BYD in the DG market, I can say that the development of the integrated solution is the realization of a great dream.
