Best Practices: PV Quality, Safety, Training and Standards

Dr. Florian Wessendorf is Managing Director of Solar Promotion GmbH and Solar Promotion International GmbH. He is responsible for the global conference program and exhibitions in North America, South America and India. He has deep expertise in the solar industry, and formerly served as Managing Director of Photovoltaic Equipment at VDMA, where he was responsible for strategic development, market research and technology scouting, advocacy and policy advice, events, PR and marketing.

Bárbara Rubim currently heads Bright Strategies, a consulting firm advising renewable energy businesses on their legal and regulatory structure. In that capacity, she has helped develop more than 230 MW in energy projects in the last three years alone, and more than 2,200 people have completed her in-company training or her Masterclass on Regulation and Business Models in Distributed Generation. In her career in the energy sector, she has acted in public administration as a consultant to the Brazilian Congress, and has worked in the third sector as a coordinator of Greenpeace's Renewable Energy campaign in Brazil, and in the private sector. In addition, she also serves as the current Vice-President of the Managing Board of ABSOLAR (Brazilian Solar Photovoltaic Energy Association) and is the Director of Energy at FIESP's Infrastructure Department. Bárbara is a lawyer with an MBA in Finance and Business Strategies from the Federal University of Uberlândia. She specializes in the regulation of the electricity sector.

Leandro Michels is associate professor at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), where he researches in the fields of PV systems and power electronics. Throughout his career, he actively contributed to consolidating the dissemination of photovoltaic energy in Brazil, providing a technical foundation related to inverter technology and grid connection of DG for several regulatory agents, sector associations and companies. He also collaborates with standardization, acting as coordinator of the Brazilian commission of the IEC PV Systems Technical Committee, and as rapporteur for the ABNT CEE 253 commission that develops Brazilian standards for connecting PV systems to the grid. He is coordinator of the Embrapii Unit in Mobility Energy, and of the PV systems testing laboratory at INRI / UFSM, accredited by INMETRO for testing PV inverters.

Eduardo Tobias is a Managing Partner at Watt Capital. He is a specialist in project investment analysis, project financing, and on mergers & acquisitions of renewable energy projects and assets in Brazil. He is a cofounder and currently the vice-coordinator of ABSOLAR's Green Hydrogen Working Group. Tobias is also a visiting Professor at FGV, teaching for its Power Sector Executive Program, and author of the books 'Investment Analysis in Utility Scale PV Projects' (2021) and 'Investment Analysis in Bioenergy Greenfield Projects' (2015). He has a BSc. in Business Administration from FGV-EAESP and a Professional Master in Bioenergy from FGV-EESP.

Ana Carla Petti has more than 20 years of experience in Regulatory, Strategic Operations Management, Risk Management and Middle-Office, working in executive positions in the energy sector at companies such as Braskem and Odebrecht Energia. She has been an executive at the Comerc Energia Group for more than seven years and currently serves as the group's director of regulatory and institutional affairs. She is a chemical engineer and lawyer, with a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, with a postgraduate degree in Financial Products and Risk Management and an MBA in Executive Management.