Analysts push back on solar blank by T&TEC: No batteries needed

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to halt elec­tric­i­ty from flow­ing on­to the na­tion­al grid from T&T’s largest so­lar farm has ig­nit­ed fierce crit­i­cism from for­mer min­is­ters, en­er­gy ex­perts and re­new­able en­er­gy ad­vo­cates, all warn­ing the coun­try risks un­der­min­ing its en­er­gy tran­si­tion and wast­ing an in­vest­ment that was ex­pect­ed to trans­form the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor.

This af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath con­firmed to Busi­ness Guardian last week Thurs­day that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is no longer ab­sorb­ing elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by the 92-megawatt Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Ltd (BC­SL) fa­cil­i­ty, the coun­try’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm. He dis­closed that the plant stopped feed­ing the grid at the end of Jan­u­ary and blamed short­com­ings in plan­ning and con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Brechin Cas­tle fa­cil­i­ty, joint­ly owned by Shell (35 per cent), bpTT (35 per cent) and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (30 per cent), was ex­pect­ed to sup­ply about eight per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tric­i­ty de­mand while free­ing up nat­ur­al gas for ex­port and high­er-val­ue down­stream in­dus­tries.

The project rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try’s biggest re­new­able en­er­gy in­vest­ment and, once ful­ly com­mis­sioned, was ex­pect­ed to be­come the largest util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm in the Caribbean.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young dis­missed the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the is­sue as a ma­jor pol­i­cy fail­ure, ar­gu­ing that of­fi­cials had ig­nored the project’s broad­er eco­nom­ic val­ue.

“It is very dis­ap­point­ing to see the Gov­ern­ment take such a back­ward step. This project was sig­nif­i­cant on many fronts for Trinidad and To­ba­go and was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with both bp and Shell.”

Young main­tained that the project’s eco­nom­ics ex­tend­ed well be­yond elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion.

“The cost of the project and a kilo­watt of elec­tric­i­ty was glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive. A ma­jor ben­e­fit was the sav­ing of mol­e­cules of nat­ur­al gas away from loss-mak­ing pow­er gen­er­a­tion and the avail­abil­i­ty of NGC tak­ing that nat­ur­al gas and sell­ing it to com­mer­cial cus­tomers in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor or us­ing it in LNG.”

He ar­gued that bat­tery stor­age was nev­er in­tend­ed to form part of the de­sign be­cause elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed dur­ing day­light hours was ex­pect­ed to flow di­rect­ly on­to the na­tion­al grid.

“There was no bat­tery stor­age be­cause all of the pow­er gen­er­at­ed was to be im­me­di­ate­ly ab­sorbed in­to our na­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty grid. Bat­tery stor­age is not on­ly ex­pen­sive but it was un­nec­es­sary as the dri­ver was pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty via a re­new­able source, there­by sav­ing nat­ur­al gas which would have been used in elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and sell­ing those mol­e­cules of gas for sig­nif­i­cant­ly more.”

Young added that the project al­so cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this project earned car­bon cred­its and pro­duced 8 per cent of our elec­tric­i­ty needs via clean, green re­new­able means. This scale of so­lar pow­er plant can al­so con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to huge projects that re­quire large amounts of elec­tric­i­ty, as it was set to gen­er­ate 92 MWs.”

He point­ed to emerg­ing in­dus­tries re­quir­ing mas­sive elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies.

“You would see the AI Hy­per­scale Da­ta Cen­ters be­ing pro­posed to use over 100 MWs. We were al­so ex­plor­ing the use of so­lar pow­er gen­er­at­ed be­ing used in Green Hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion.”

Young con­clud­ed that, “It is very dis­turb­ing how the un­in­formed de­ci­sions be­ing made by the UNC are set­ting T&T back decades.”

The for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­so ad­vanced plans for an­oth­er large re­new­able en­er­gy project at Or­ange Grove. That de­vel­op­ment, led by Light­source bp on be­half of bp Al­ter­na­tive En­er­gy T&T and Shell Re­new­ables Caribbean Ltd, was lat­er shelved af­ter Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to use the land for an­oth­er pur­pose.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that re­new­able gen­er­a­tion would have re­duced pres­sure on both tax­pay­ers and the coun­try’s gas sup­plies.

“The re­cent re­port I read con­firms that this is a back­ward step by the Gov­ern­ment. The so­lar farm was meant to tran­si­tion our elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in­to a more re­silient and mod­ern eco-friend­ly sys­tem with less de­pen­dence on fos­sil fu­els.”

He con­tend­ed that di­vert­ing less gas in­to elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion would have ben­e­fit­ed the wider econ­o­my.

“More gas would have be­come avail­able to sup­port our en­er­gy in­dus­try and earn much more scarce for­eign ex­change.”

Gon­za­les added that low­er gas con­sump­tion by T&TEC would al­so have re­duced the bur­den cre­at­ed by elec­tric­i­ty sub­si­dies.

“The ris­ing debt owed to NGC by T&TEC as a re­sult of the gas sub­sidy would have been lim­it­ed in the com­ing years as less gas would have been need­ed to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty. This would have saved tax­pay­ers bil­lions in the next decade.”

He al­so de­fend­ed the ab­sence of bat­tery stor­age.

“Bat­tery stor­age would have made the project very ex­pen­sive, and the tech­ni­cal ad­vice was that it was not need­ed giv­en the fact that the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed was to be im­me­di­ate­ly placed on the na­tion­al grid.”

Gon­za­les ar­gued that re­new­able elec­tric­i­ty would al­so have sup­port­ed fu­ture green hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion while help­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go re­duce green­house gas emis­sions.

“It is just po­lit­i­cal spite and nar­row-mind­ed­ness that in­flu­enced this pol­i­cy shift by the Gov­ern­ment, and yet again, they have placed Trinidad and To­ba­go at the back of the class.”

One source told the Busi­ness Guardian that in­cor­po­rat­ing bat­ter­ies in­to a so­lar fa­cil­i­ty of that size would have in­creased cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture by be­tween 70 and 100 per cent, mak­ing the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly less at­trac­tive com­mer­cial­ly. The source added that the 92-megawatt out­put dur­ing day­light hours was ex­pect­ed to be bal­anced by re­duc­ing gen­er­a­tion from ex­ist­ing gas-fired pow­er sta­tions, al­low­ing nat­ur­al gas sav­ings with­out the need for ex­pen­sive bat­tery sys­tems.

With elec­tric­i­ty no longer flow­ing from the coun­try’s flag­ship so­lar fa­cil­i­ty, at­ten­tion is now turn­ing to whether tech­ni­cal up­grades, bat­tery stor­age and long-term grid mod­erni­sa­tion can re­vive a project once pro­mot­ed as the cen­tre­piece of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­new­able en­er­gy fu­ture.

En­er­gy sec­tor ex­pert Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as deeply dis­ap­point­ing but cau­tioned that the dif­fi­cul­ties point to broad­er weak­ness­es with­in the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem rather than flaws in re­new­able en­er­gy it­self.

“As some­one who has long ad­vo­cat­ed for more re­new­able en­er­gy in Trinidad & To­ba­go, the news that the biggest so­lar project in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean was un­able to dis­patch elec­tric­i­ty to the grid comes as a big dis­ap­point­ment.”

Dri­ver ex­plained that main­tain­ing grid sta­bil­i­ty ap­pears to have be­come the prin­ci­pal ob­sta­cle.

“What has be­come clear is that T&TEC has faced sig­nif­i­cant grid man­age­ment prob­lems with ac­cept­ing the in­ter­mit­tent elec­tric­i­ty on­to the grid.”

He not­ed that sys­tem op­er­a­tors re­port­ed­ly had to in­crease spin­ning re­serves from gas-fired gen­er­a­tors to ac­com­mo­date fluc­tu­at­ing so­lar gen­er­a­tion.

“Ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try sources, the vol­ume of gas re­quired to keep this spin­ning re­serve avail­able from these pow­er sta­tions is sur­pris­ing­ly even more than the sav­ings in gas from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the so­lar project.”

Dri­ver ob­served that T&TEC had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed the grid could com­fort­ably ac­com­mo­date the so­lar elec­tric­i­ty.

“While T&TEC pre­vi­ous­ly pub­licly and re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that they could eas­i­ly ab­sorb the in­ter­mit­tent so­lar from the project on­to the grid, this ap­par­ent­ly turned out not to be the case when the elec­tric­i­ty ac­tu­al­ly be­gan to flow.”

He be­lieves age­ing gen­er­at­ing equip­ment and changes to con­trol sys­tems com­pli­cat­ed op­er­a­tions.

“The im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion to this prob­lem is the in­stal­la­tion of bat­ter­ies on the grid to smooth the flow of the elec­tric­i­ty from the so­lar plant on­to the grid and en­able grid sta­bil­i­ty with­out the need for an in­creased nat­ur­al gas-fired spin­ning re­serve.”

Dri­ver wel­comed the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s move to seek con­sul­tants for an In­te­grat­ed Re­source and Re­silience Plan to mod­ernise the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty net­work over the next two decades, say­ing the ex­er­cise was over­due.

He al­so point­ed to glob­al changes in elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets.

“The boom in AI da­ta cen­tres, es­pe­cial­ly in the USA, has put a strain on the tur­bine man­u­fac­tur­ing sup­ply chain and with de­mand out­strip­ping sup­ply, prices are re­port­ed to have more than dou­bled in the past few years.”

That trend, he ar­gued, has made re­new­able pow­er in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive com­pared with new gas-fired gen­er­a­tion.

Dri­ver stressed that the Brechin Cas­tle ex­pe­ri­ence should not de­rail the coun­try’s re­new­able am­bi­tions.

“Clear­ly lessons need to be learnt from this ex­pe­ri­ence, but it must not be used to un­der­mine the over­all push to in­crease re­new­able en­er­gy pen­e­tra­tion and to re­duce the vol­ume of nat­ur­al gas be­ing used to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty.”

Eco­nom­ic ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh al­so de­scribed the project’s sus­pen­sion as a ma­jor set­back, fram­ing the is­sue as an eco­nom­ic rather than en­vi­ron­men­tal one.

“I think this is a very trag­ic sit­u­a­tion that we have shut down this project. I think every­body would agree with that.”

He ar­gued Trinidad and To­ba­go should go much fur­ther by es­tab­lish­ing an in­dus­tri­al es­tate ded­i­cat­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing re­new­able en­er­gy com­po­nents.

“I think we need to de­vel­op an in­dus­tri­al es­tate sole­ly de­vot­ed to mak­ing com­po­nents for the so­lar and re­new­able in­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean.”

Kublals­ingh sug­gest­ed the coun­try could part­ner with in­ter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­duce so­lar pan­els, bat­ter­ies, in­vert­ers and oth­er equip­ment lo­cal­ly.

He al­so pro­posed large-scale de­vel­op­ment of so­lar-pow­ered smart homes to re­duce house­hold liv­ing costs while cre­at­ing de­mand for lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts.

“The best eco­nom­ic op­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go is to in­vest in these, not just a so­lar farm, but an in­dus­tri­al es­tate to­tal­ly de­vot­ed to the pro­duc­tion of com­po­nents.”

He main­tained that en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty has be­come in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions re­shape glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets.

“We have to go full-scale with so­lar and re­new­able in­dus­tries. And not just in­dus­tries, but the tech­nolo­gies. We have to cre­ate our own tech­nol­o­gy.”

In­dus­try sources fa­mil­iar with the Brechin Cas­tle project al­so de­fend­ed the orig­i­nal de­sign, ex­plain­ing that adding bat­tery stor­age would have dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creased con­struc­tion costs.

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