BL&P ready for competition

The amount of electricity being supplied by the island’s sole electricity company is expected to dip significantly when its over 100-year monopoly comes to an end.

However, Managing Director at the Barbados Light & Power Company Ltd (BL&P) Roger Blackman believes the company will maintain a major piece of the pie, given the level of investment required by other players to enter the market and the fact that the utility company has been repositioning itself for the change for some time.

He gave the assurance of the company’s readiness for competition in the electric utility sector on Tuesday, as he provided an update on major projects and some new initiatives being undertaken by the BL&P.

The utility company and the Government have been locked in negotiations for several months, trying to determine what the company’s new licences would look like, as Government moves to open up the market to new players.

Just last month, Minister of Energy Kerrie Symmonds said meetings were still ongoing and both sides were ironing out “legal and technical issues” to bring the negotiations to a close soon.

Blackman said he was pleased with the negotiations for BL&P’s new licences, declaring that “the process is progressing well”.

“We are working closely with Government diligently through the process to ensure that we bring that to conclusion, and that will of course facilitate the energy transition and energy goals that we want to make sure will happen in as smooth and reliable a manner as possible,” he added.

Without disclosing the details of the legal and technical issues that needed to be ironed out, Blackman acknowledged there were “matters to be resolved” but quickly gave the assurance that both sides had “common interest” in ensuring the island’s renewable energy goals were achieved.

Barbados is seeking to achieve 100 per cent reliance on renewable energy sources by 2030. That would include major local investments in the sector, competition in electricity generation, and carbon neutrality.

“Those objectives really overarch everything and govern the discussions that we have been having. We are certainly on the same page in relation to those objectives,” Blackman stressed.

“So, I expect going forward, in relation to our projects as well as the several projects of independent power producers who are entering the market, and certainly the many already in the market over the past 10 years, albeit on a smaller scale, that provisions would facilitate the continued growth and the acceleration of the renewable energy infrastructure over the next ten years.”

However, Blackman acknowledged that with pending competition, the BL&P would be required to make several critical changes to remain relevant.

“We will be putting those things in place, but our strategy for quite some time, and continues to this day, remains around a fuel-to-assets strategy – where those assets that traditionally run on fossil fuel, we started many years ago with the strategy of changing those out to more renewable options.

“That augurs well for us as well because while our share in the supply side of the market is expected to shrink with other participants playing a part, the size of the pie, because of the type of investments required, will grow. A lot of our focus also shifts to the grid modernisation and the investment required on the wider side of the business – the grid, the smart meters, the communications and so on – required to facilitate the integration of increased renewables,” Blackman explained.

“So there is some readjustment in terms of strategy and the organisation of the business, but there are significant opportunities ahead of us in the new market structure that is being contemplated,” he added.

Blackman said the utility company was not fazed by the expected competition, pointing out that the BL&P was responsible for introducing a renewable energy rider which was later replaced by the feed-in-tariff programme, that allows producers of electricity to sell their energy to the national grid for a set rate.

“So, with that, competition has been there for many years and growing and will continue to grow. From our perspective, we see this [the opening up of the market] as a win-win situation for the utility, all stakeholders and certainly from a country standpoint,” the BL&P top official said. (MM)