BPL aiming for 15 percent power generation from solar or renewables by late 2025

BPL aiming for 15 percent power generation from solar or renewables by late 2025
Bahamas Power and Light Chairman Dr Donovan Moxey (FILE PHOTO)

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) is aiming to have 15 percent of its power generation needs across the country come from solar or renewable sources by late 2025, according to the company’s chairman, Dr Donovan Moxey.

Moxey, who was addressing the Bahamas Business Outlook, acknowledged that the company’s electricity grid is currently not as stable as the company would like to facilitate large amounts of solar generation on its network.

“It needs to be stabilized so you don’t have cascading faults. In order to do this, you need to have distributed battery technology,” Moxey said.

“We’re working to have distributed battery technology in place on New Providence by the summer of 2022. Coupled with this, we would then have expanded rooftop solar and we will then move toward utility generation facilities, which can be waste to energy or a large solar facility.

“We want to make sure, when we do implement solar in our network, that we do so in a responsible and prudent manner so that we don’t run into issues that can bring down the entire network.”

Moxey further noted: “We are hoping that by Q4 of 2025 [we] have 15 percent of our generation across the entire country come from solar or renewable sources.”

These efforts, he noted, would allow for the expansion of the small-scale renewable generation programme launched in 2017, which to this point has had 380 applicants.

Moxey also noted that BPL is moving forward with its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), has selected a vendor and is awaiting funding from the rate reduction bond to proceed further.