Despite the difficulties, Solatio has not given up on its green hydrogen megaproject in the state of Piauí, the company’s director, Walacy de Almeida, told BNamericas.
The project consists of a plant with 3GW of electrolysis capacity, which aims to produce 400.000t/a of green hydrogen and 2.2Mt/y (million tons per year) of green ammonia, in addition to an integrated 9GW solar network, with an investment of 27bn reais (US$5.3bn).
In May 2025, however, the National Electric System Operator (ONS) denied the request to connect the project to the grid, citing the risk of structural overload and voltage collapse at adjacent substations. Subsequently, the Federal Court of Piauí suspended the installation license due to concerns over water and electricity permits.
In view of the regulatory and legal obstacles, Solatio went on to consider converting the project into a data center complex.
BNamericas has learned, however, that the company is preparing the technical studies required to obtain the opinion on access of the hydrogen plant to the basic grid and intends to submit them soon to the ONS.
Almeida emphasized that the “Piauí project” has advanced as a green hydrogen plant since its conception and has reached the pre-FEED (basic engineering) stage.
“In recent months we decided to evaluate changing it into a data center complex, which is still underway. But we continue to believe in the H2 thesis, only on a timeline after 2032,” noted the executive.
Context
The Brazilian power grid is “congested” due to the mismatch between the expansion of the transmission and distribution networks and the growth of centralized and distributed renewable generation.
To this is added the large volume of projects for data centers and green hydrogen with access requests.
As a result, in addition to legal and regulatory uncertainties and Brazil’s high interest rate, several projects have been discontinued. Solatio itself even requested that Aneel revoke the operating authorizations for photovoltaic plants in Minas Gerais.
(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)
