By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

“Stability” concerns over the Bahamas Electricity Corporation’s (BEC) grid forced the Government to defer decisions on whether to approve utility-scale renewable energy projects until 2014, a Cabinet Minister said yesterday.

Kenred Dorsett, minister of the environment, said the Christie administration determined that so-called ‘grid stability’ was essential to preserving “the integrity” of renewable energy technology when it connected to BEC’s existing transmission/distribution mechanism.

For that reason, it decided to focus on dealing with BEC’s existing problems first, splitting the utility into two and seeking private sector joint venture and management partners for its generation and transmission/distribution systems, respectively.

Modernising and reforming the distribution system, which includes BEC’s nationwide grid, will open the gateway to the integration of renewable energy technology into the Bahamas’ energy mix, Mr Dorsett confirmed.

“If one reads the Request for Proposal (RFP), it speaks to a timeframe for a number of things,” the Minister with responsibility for renewable energy told Tribune Business.

“One of the things we are cognisant of is we need the regulatory framework that speaks to renewable energy technology and the integrity of the grid, and secondly we have to address the issue of grid stability for interconnection with the grid.”

The Government has targeted producing 30 per cent of the Bahamas’ total energy demand through renewable sources by 2030, with 10 per cent - or one-third of that amount - coming from self-generation by households and businesses.

Yet the Christie administration has effectively placed renewable power producers on the ‘back burner’, as its BEC RFP reads: “While the Government is actively planning to implement a Residential Self-Generation programme in the short term, it expects to address proposals for the renewable power production sector in 2014 as part of a second phase of reforms (once this first phase has been completed).”

Guilden Gilbert, the Bahamas Renewable Energy Association’s president, previously told Tribune Business that there was “no reason” for the Government to delay decisions on renewable energy proposals until 2014, and called on it to reinstate its recently-pulled Family Island tender.

However, Mr Dorsett told Tribune Business that “by and large, the Government is still going to embrace renewable energy”, pointing to solar water heaters as “something we are aggressively pursuing”.

He added that another concern was whether renewable energy projects could sustain consistent output levels, especially if there was heavy cloud cover or a drop in wind speed.

“All the advice we’re getting from internal and external consultants, including representatives from BEC, is that to ensure the integrity of renewable technology is not compromised, we have to ensure the grid is stable for the feed-in of renewables,” Mr Dorsett told Tribune Business.

“The delay is to ensure a proper framework, not only legislation but to ensure there is no grid stability issues when you begin to tie-in renewables.

“If we are to have net billing, if we are to have renewable energy, we must have grid stability.”

Mr Dorsett’s statements were backed by a source close to the BEC RFP process, who told Tribune Business that utility-scale renewable projects were currently “too much to handle” for the grid.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if multiple renewable projects were fed into the BEC grid during the day, this could push it past peak loads. And, at night, if renewable power output dropped significantly, the existing BEC grid was not well-placed to cope.

“It can cause too many problems for the grid,” the source said. “You have to have the systems in place to bring that power in so everything is in sync with the stability of the grid.

“They’re running ahead pretty quickly on this residential self-generation, which BEC thinks its ready for, but when you put in solar farms..... That makes sense in the mid-term, but it’s too much for them to handle in the short-term, because the grid is not stable. It would put a lot of pressure on it.”