Power play

Two months after Government announced its plans to break-up the near 120-year-old electricity supply monopoly by the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P) and open up the market to new players, the head of that utility company says they are ready for the new state of play in the energy sector.

In fact, managing director of BL&P Roger Blackman, told Barbados TODAY that he did not foresee the decision having too significant an impact, as the current regulations already allowed for some level of competition on the production side. The suggestion was that BL&P has been preparing itself for some time for the possibility of a fully opened sector

“For all of our existence we have had a non-exclusive licence, so the framework always provided for Government to issue licences to other folks to participate in the space. So, from that perspective it is not that significant a change because our licence has always been and continues to be non-exclusive,” Blackman said, even though BL&P owns the power distribution infrastructure in the country.

He added: “So the changes were not ones that were not anticipated. Legislative changes are being put in place to introduce additional licences and we have been anticipating those and working internally to ensure that we are ready for the transition. We certainly are working closely with Government to ensure that they achieve their targets.”

The BL&P managing director noted that increased competition was already evident in the renewable sector, which already has more than 2000 energy generating licences already issued as Government forges ahead with its goal of 100 per cent green energy.

“Over the last ten years we have had a number of licences issued. In fact, we have well over 2000 energy generating licences and this has continued under the Feeding Tariff programme, which was recently announced by the Fair Trading Commission. So already those licences combined have more renewable energy than we do. We have a ten-megawatt solar farm in St Lucy but collectively those persons on the renewable energy programme have about 25 megawatts today. This accounts for 15-20 per cent of our energy demand on a sunny day,” he explained during his interview with Barbados TODAY this morning.

Blackman contended that as Government forged ahead with its mission of making Barbados 100 per cent green energy dependent by 2030, players coming into the market would likely be making investment in line with this vision.

“Going forward we expect that there would be independent power producers with utility scale renewable energy generating projects, whether that would be in the form of solar farms, wind farms or large biomass waste-to-energy facilities. It is going to change the landscape because although things are growing rapidly with respect to solar deployments, it is still a far cry from 100 per cent. So, the stakes have to change over the next ten years as we transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy,” he noted

Leading the debate on amendments to the Electric Light and Power Act in Parliament back in August, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams made it clear that the days of BL&P’s monopoly in the production, generation, distribution and transmission of electricity in Barbados were coming to an end as Government made greater efforts to build out the alternative energy sector here.

Abrahams also lauded the utility company for its reliability over the years, but insisted that the time had come for it to upgrade its generating plant, move its overhead infrastructure underground, and share the generation and distribution space with new players in renewable energy.

“Admittedly it has no competition and could probably stand some competition going forward, but in terms of utilities, the Barbados Light & Power is one of the most reliable organisations in Barbados,” said Abrahams at the time.
colvillemounsey@barbadostoday.bb