The competition for the capture of customers in the Free Energy Market needs to undergo consumer education and the use of technology, in the view of the CEO of Thopen, Gustavo Ribeiro. According to the executive, the dispute for customers from prices is destructive and does not generate value.
“There is a step in educating this client, because the energy is complex. People are used to Brazil to receive an account and pay, simple as that. Understanding the account, seeing what can be optimized, is a very large generation of value in this ecosystem and very little perceived by agents, ”he says.
In the free energy market, the high and medium voltage consumer can choose the power supplier, through direct negotiation with a generator or trading.
In the view of the Thopen executive, the competition for the client in this market today is “predatory”.
Any cost
“A lot of people, in the madness of seeking the customer at any cost, has a very large cost. That’s where the predatory question comes in, ”he says.
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The CEO points out that free environment consumers also pay attention to the financial health of companies before closing deals.
“This market will need more and more robust, capitalized, balanced companies. Today the consumer wants to have robustness, the guarantee that this is a great brand, which will be able to deliver, ”he says.
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In this sense, the company seeks to be aware of the customer acquisition cost to maintain a balance.
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One of the strategies for this is to have solutions that offer differential to consumers.
“Technology guarantees a good, quiet, easy and super didactic journey, because to serve this consumer has to be a simple, easy business that he understands,” he explains.
Artificial intelligence
One of the technologies employed is artificial intelligence, which helps map any errors in electricity tariffs. After the diagnosis, Thopen offers the solution that best suits each client, whether the migration to the free energy market or the adoption of the distributed generation model.
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In Ribeiro’s view, the process of showing potential clients the errors present in energy tariffs and presenting opportunities is part of the consumer empowerment process of the electricity sector. The company has worked with 250,000 consumer units in energy consumption management processes.
“We look at this client, as he is, and shows the benefits, through a recommendation, and then the customer has the decision on what to do,” he explains.
Thopen was born from the fusion between RZK Energia and Pontal Energy, controlled by the American Private Equity Manager denham capital. Completed recently, the transaction exceeded $ 1 billion and took about a year to be completed. In all, the companies together negotiate about 500,000 Average Megawatts (MWM) per month.
Expand generation
Pontal Energy operates in the generation and marketing of wind and solar energy, with a total installed capacity of 608 megawatts (MW). Already RZK Energia focuses on the distributed generation sector, with installed capacity of 163 MW, in 45 solar generation plants to biogas. The company also has 40 new plants under construction, which will increase the total generation capacity to 300 MW at peak.
As a result of the junction between companies, Thopen expects to invest more than $ 2.3 billion by 2027. One of the outbreaks of growth is the free energy market.
The company is intended to expand power generation to meet the expansion of the free environment.
“We will accelerate this front of putting more assets on your feet to serve our customers. The demand is overlapping, ”says the CEO.
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As a trader, Thopen negotiates mainly the energy of the group’s plants, in order to optimize the allocation of electricity generated in the generation’s own assets.
“Eventually, we go to the market to look for energy to meet the specific needs of our customers,” explains Ribeiro.
With an eye on the opening of the free market for low voltage consumers, scheduled for the coming years, the company is also closing partnerships with companies from sector such as sanitation and telecommunications.
“These companies already have the customer, so the incremental cost to deliver our product, to bring this customer here, is very marginal and this ensures that the operation is profitable,” he says.
