150MW battery storage ‘to stabilise grid, boost solar expansion’

Barbados is moving to procure about 150MW of grid-scale battery storage in an effort to stabilise an overstrained electricity network and clear the way for a new wave of solar investment, Minister of Energy Kerrie Symmonds has announced.

The government is preparing to launch a major international procurement drive for battery storage in a strategic move to resolve ongoing grid limitations, Symmonds said in a speech to the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI), where he revealed that the massive infrastructure injection is required to handle the island’s booming photovoltaic (PV) industry.

“We are about to procure probably around 150 megawatts of battery storage via a special effort in the international marketplace so as to bring resolution to the difficulties we have with regard to renewable energy in Barbados,” the minister said.

While Barbados leads the English-speaking Caribbean in solar adoption, the energy minister explained that the current grid infrastructure faces severe capacity thresholds that threaten its stability if more intermittent power is introduced without adequate storage safeguards.

“We have plenty PV, but you can’t only flood the lines with photovoltaic energy,” Symmonds said. “You must have the storage capacity so as to modulate the flow onto the grid and then be able to source it at different times at different points of the day when you need it in different places.”

He further warned of the technical risks of over-reliance on direct PV generation without immediate modernisation of distribution capabilities.

“The utility must be able to dispatch and move that power around the country. It can’t all be on the grid because then you will carry more than the grid can tolerate, and that’s when you have breakdowns.”

Once the 150MW storage infrastructure is secured and installed, the government expects it to unblock current system constraints and unleash a major new wave of private and commercial renewable energy projects across the island

“When we have all of this storage, it has to be installed. And then there will once again be a surge across this island of people who are now returning to put the photovoltaics on the roof and put it on top of the buildings that they work in,” the Minister predicted.

Highlighting the island’s regional standing, Symmonds noted that Barbados currently ranks third in the wider Caribbean for renewable implementation, trailing only Suriname and Belize, which rely heavily on natural hydroelectric resources.

With the rest of the Eastern Caribbean now embarking on similar renewable energy transitions, Symmonds urged local stakeholders to scale up technical training to turn green energy installation into a viable service export.

“If we know that Grenada going this road and we know Dominica going this road and we know St Kitts is going this road, and we know Antigua going this road… is it not time that we scale up our technicians to have the capacity to move the service beyond the Barbados border and into all of those marketplaces?”

The energy minister suggested that redirecting human resources into this technical expansion would not only support the domestic energy transition but also provide a critical productive outlet and growth engine for the economy.

(RR)