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Northern Caribbean — Islands For Solar

The Bahamas and solar energy are compatible. Solar energy is potentially the main source of energy for this environment. Tropical balmy islands, nature at its best – home to a major and still growing tourist industry adjacent to the worlds richest country.

Solar output in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos is more than 1700 kwHrs per
kw installed so the utilisation of solar is more than economic on all of these islands. All the northern islands have strong links with Britain and all were former colonies. Bermuda is self-governing but also a dependent territory while the Turks and Caicos is a dependency only 35,000 people scattered over many small islands.

The Americans exercise enormous influence in the northern Caribbean partly because of tourism but also because the islands act as offshore financial platforms. However the biggest industry is tourism
and most of the tourists are from North America.

The northern set of islands known as the Lucayan Archipelago is very lying and the highest point is only 62 metres. The northern part is known as the Bahamas Islands and the southern the smaller Turks and Caicos Islands. The Bahamas cover a large area although most of the population live on
the small island of New Providence in the city and capital of Nassau which has 274,000 out of the 385,000 population. The other large town is Freeport with 55,000 located on Grand Bahama. This means two large towns account for two thirds of the population. The other islands many of them very large including Andros and Abaco and many others have very small populations. It makes conventional infrastructure very expensive. Apart from numerous ferries there are 61 different airports serving the islands. Tourism is the main industry accounting for 50% of the national income and more than 50% of the jobs but it isn’t always advantageous for the Bahamas. Many of the tourist centres are American built and managed with their own infrastructure especially the northern islands just off the Florida coast and are effectively part of the US. All energy is based on imported fossil fuels – diesel or natural gas.

The site, Change.org is hosting a petition to change all energy to renewables and certainly solar is the obvious candidate in terms of cost, flexibility and scaling. Offgridinstaller and its ‘mini power stations’ could satisfy all of the needs of the Bahamas. Brid power averages at 33 cents per kwhr so
cheap solar energy would help new businesses to expand especially in the area of food processing and agriculture. This would balance the economy and add to the income of ordinary Bahamians. The Bahamas need to set an example on reducing carbon emissions as the low lying topography means that if Greenland ice shelf continue to melt these low lying islands will be
inundated by rising sea levels

The Turks and Caicos islands are smaller and fewer islands in the same chain as the Bahamas.Tourism is again the only industry apart from repairing and maintaining sail boats, the even smaller population (only 37,000) need solar and solar containers on each inhabited island providing
local energy. Currently these island have no major solar energy installations.

The most northerly islands are Bermuda totalling only 1,035 km2 with a population of 71,000. It has its own parliament and prime minister but remains a UK dependency and has a colonial governor.
It is one of the richest countries in the world and prices to match. The main industry is offshore finance but in the past both the British and the US have had naval bases on the islands. Tourism has been an important industry since the early 20th Century and even agriculture was important in the 19thCentury Its an associate member of Caricom but does very little trade with any part of the Caribbean.

There is no solar or any renewable energy on the islands. Bermuda has diesel generators totalling 165 mW in capacity. The company called Bermuda Electric Co.(BELCO) was purchased in 2019 for $365 million by a US based utility company. However there is a 20 year development plan for power development which includes renewables. Economic growth and population continue to expand and the new demand can only be met by solar and possibly wind. Offgridinstaller is the answer to expensive grid power and Bermuda could switch 100% to solar power.

The region is a series of small islands with small populations so unsuitable for grid networks common in large industrialised economies. Electricity tariffs are high on all of the islands ranging from 33 to 41 US Cents per kWhr and even more when the lack of reliability necessitates the purchase of generators so many economic activities are limited and unemployment and underemployment is common. Only Bermuda has full employment and the Turks and Caicos is casual employment in tourism and fishing.
The solution is an offgrid solar container sufficiently flexible on any of the islands to provide all the power needed for isolated communities and even the largest towns. In contrast conventional power suppliers established a natural gas power station which requires significant imports of gas and a significant expansion in the power distribution system. As seen in the last 10 years such infrastructure is exceedingly vulnerable to extreme weather events.

Biblio

• NREL Bahamas-energy initiative
• Change.org – petition on renewables
• News sources on hurricanes over Bahamas
• NREL Turks and Caicos Islands
• BELCO website Bermuda
• Wikipedia all territories

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