Anglican Diocese breaks ground on multi-million-dollar PV project

Construction will start in a few weeks on a multi-million-dollar photovoltaic system that the Anglican Church says will be one of its major generators of income to offset a decline in “traditional monetary giving”.

Chairman of the Barbados Diocesan Trustees Gregory Hinkson said Phase one of the project will see the installation of 856 kilowatts of photovoltaic carport systems on five church properties.

The largest installation, accounting for approximately 50 per cent of that amount, will be at the St Andrew’s Parish Church where the ground breaking ceremony for the massive undertaking was held on Monday.

“For a number of years our Church has been in dire need of another source of income, to respond to, or offset, the decline in traditional monetary giving within our Diocese; and the impact of course that the recent pandemic, still ongoing, has even heightened the need for such a response,” Anglicann Bishop Reverend Michael Maxwell said.

“This venture on which we embark today is going to be one of our responses as it will, after three or four years, be one of the major income generators to greatly assist and sustain the level of mission and ministry our Church hopes to pursue in the near future. And it will hopefully reduce the financial burden on our individual parishes and enable them to channel their own funds towards localised ministries and community outreach.”

Giving the details of the project, Hinkson said approval has already been obtained for three of the five sites.

“Literally everything is in place in order to put the project to start likely within the next couple weeks,” he said. “At this particular point in time, subject to the hurricane season, if there are no significant disruptions coming from that we expect that this project will be completed first quarter 2023. In all, it would be just under three million dollars in total for the five sites in Phase one.”

Hinkson added that the Church expects to break ground at the second site, the St Philip Parish Church, within the next few months.

The cost of completing that system and the one in St Andrew, which would be the two largest in Phase one, is approximately $2.2 million, which has already been sourced. Of that, $1.5 million is for the St Andrew site and the remaining $700 000 for St Philip.

Under Phase two of the project, the Anglican Church has partnered with a government entity to install solar photovoltaic systems on the roofs of five churches and adjoining buildings. Hinkson said this phase is intended to add an additional 300 kilowatts to bring the total installed capacity in the two phases to over one million watts.

Bishop Maxwell said the project will enable the Anglican Church to make further use of the Diocese’s land and buildings while protecting the environment, through the use of green energy and reducing the need for fossil fuels.

He added that the initiative is the Diocese’s direct response to one of the Five Marks of Mission within the Anglican Church which are to: proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; teach, baptise and nurture new believers; respond to human need by loving service; seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation; and strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and re-new the life of the earth.
(AH)