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SOLAR POWER IS ON US
BUILDING COMPANY MRV INTENDS TO INSTALL IN ALL ITS NEW PROJECTS SOLAR POWER GENERATION ARRAYS – WITHOUT PASSING ON COSTS TO HOMEOWNERS. THE RETURN WILL BE THE MARKETING GAINS.
MRV, from Minas Gerais, the largest building company in Latin America, as imposed itself a challenging goal: within five years all its projects must be equipped with solar power generation arrays. This is no small thing. MRV builds approximately 40,000 apartments per year. Equipped with photovoltaic panels, together its buildings could generate has many as 316 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year—the power consumed by a city of 121,000 inhabitants. In some condominiums, such as Spazio Parthenon, currently being built in Contagem, in the Belo Horizonte metro area, all apartments will be supplied with solar power. In others, such as Spazio Solar do Parque, in Salvador, Bahia, it will be the common areas that will be supplied with solar power. “We think of it as a benefit for our customers, who will not have to pay electricity bills, and it will also be good for the company and for the environment," says Eduardo Fischer, chairman of MRV. “No one is doing this in the scale that we are doing it. We are in the forefront.”
Scale—better yet, the lack thereof—is one of the challenges to get the project up. To ensure that the low-cost apartments it builds are feasible, MRV usually works with a small number of suppliers to ensure that building material prices are competitive. All the paint, for example, is bought from a single manufacturer, Suvinil. All pipes an fittings are supplied by Tigre. But who is the largest manufacturer of photovoltaic panels in Brazil? “There still isn’t one,” says Fischer. MRV has been ordering the equipment from at least ten companies, but the executive expects that this will change in the future—ideally all materials are bought from one or two suppliers of each product.
This project requires an investment of R$800 million, which will be fully covered by MRV. “The average price of our apartments is R$150,000 and the solar power arrays cost R$4,000 per apartment. There is no margin to be added to the price,” says Fischer. The marketing appeal, however, should offset the cost. MRV has created a seal that ranks its projects according to the number sustainability actions taken in each project. All the building must meet a series of requirements, such as to have a selective waste collection site or individual water metering in the apartments. Those that in addition individual gas metering receive the MRV +Verde 1 seal. The generation of photovoltaic power ensures the awarding of the Level 2 seal; and rainwater reuse systems the awarding of the Level 3 seal. When showing a property to a customer, the seals help to explain their hallmarks—and speed up the sale.
Fonte: Exame Magazine
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