NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The push to use cleaner, greener fuel and the pledge to limit greenhouse emissions is leading the government to make more eco-friendly decisions, something that Bahamas Power and Light CEO Shevonn Cambridge said will aid in reducing the strain on the utility.
Additionally, in efforts to embrace more renewable energy, the government has earmarked several projects across the family islands which have been granted approved funding from external donors.
Cambridge says that there is now a demand for more renewable products, therefore the manufacturers are going to produce more, he explained that with more people and things that require energy branching out and integrating cleaner tools into the power grid will be beneficial to the country overall.
“Working hand in hand with this insatiable demand or appetite for energy, is the need for conservation and the promotion of an efficiency so that the energy that we are producing we can use it as efficiently as possible.
“[…] We are victims of our own progress so to speak, so we now have to manage that balancing act between luxury and convenience, and what is good for the earth and for sustainability,” Cambridge said.
The BPL CEO said that although they cannot control the prices on the market, which fluctuate and contract irregularly, they can manage how electricity is produced and which fuel they decide to use.
“There are a number of different fuels out there, but to switch fuel requires, some capital injection because you have to buy new parts so the fuel that we are currently able to burn, heavy fuel oil and automotive diesel oil.”
As global warming remains a contributing factor to high energy costs with harsher temperatures in the winters and summers leading to heavier power consumption, Cambridge says that the United Nations and other affiliated entities are incentivizing countries, as well as the Bahamas to use more eco-friendly energy products.
The International Development Bank (IDB) has funded several renewable projects in the family islands, which Cambridge said is going to help lighten the load on those islands.
“The IDB (funded projects) is two-fold, one is to reduce our demand for fuel but its also to provide an element of resilience in those islands so here it is when you have storms and stuff the way our islands are configured, a lot of the plants were put in the middle of the island and they had one feeder going north and one feeder going south and because the communities developed along the coast there was a lot of exposure to any type of weather […] a little rain, a little wind along the coast, ‘boom’ power goes out.”
Power to hospitals, shelters, police stations, and other essential services were jeopardized by the old plant systems; Cambridge said that self-sustainable, independent microgrids were the answer to fixing these issues, something that also is attained through using the renewable infrastructure.
“By doing that, you now provide emergency power that doesn’t require fuel to be brought in to the island […] and so what that essentially does is allows those centers to have backup power that could run them for days if we were to lose the major grid,” Cambridge said.
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