Selling storage is not selling photovoltaics

Storage sales had been treated with the same commercial logic as photovoltaic system sales. In episode 194 of Papo Solar, published by Canal Solar on 25 September 2026, Renan Casadei, BESS sales manager at BelEnergy, points to three recurring mistakes: copying a competitor's proposal, sizing only by the bill and bringing price to the table before the technical analysis. According to him, the bill helps identify whether arbitrage is the main need, but does not replace assessment of the operational profile.

Technical note EPE-DEE-NT-098/2019-r0, of 29 November 2019, supports the argument from the planning side. EPE lists energy arbitrage, backup, peak demand reduction, ancillary services and an alternative to grid expansion as distinct applications, and notes that combining applications in the same system is a way to improve the viability of the investment.

The commercial consequence is direct: the initial survey defines the project's revenue. Critical loads, the charging window within contracted demand, frequency of interruption and expected autonomy are not engineering details. They are the variables that say which services the same asset can provide and how many of them add up within the same investment.

The example cited in the episode, a resort in the Northeast with 5 MWh and a payback of around eight months, shows the effect. The short payback came from the right application for that operation, and that diagnosis happens before the proposal.