A renewable energy company has expressed disappointment at a government decision not to allow commercial entities that install renewable energy systems to tie into the national grid when it undertakes energy sector reforms in the coming year.
Philip Holdom, owner of Alternative Power Supply Bahamas, installs solar systems for a living and was invited to be a part of the government's most recent National Energy Taskforce.
However, he said that despite his proposals, he never saw the final report and does not agree with the government's stated plan on business operators who install renewable energy systems.
"I submitted a one-page paper to them outlining what I thought would be a good renewable energy mix for the country. The goal should be 30 percent (of energy from renewable sources) overall - that's the maximum amount you can put on a generator-based grid.
"I proposed they should allow residential consumers to (generate) 100 percent of their power (from renewables), and businesses to do 50 percent of their power.
"The reason I said 50 percent was because businesses use the majority of power. If they made 100 percent of their power then BEC would have no revenues. When I met with the ministers, they seemed to think that was a good idea - a good compromise," said Holdom, owner of Alternative Power Supply Bahamas.
In its recently issued request for proposal, which intends to support the splitting of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation into two entities which would be privately owned/managed, with the aim of reducing power costs, the government said that it plans to address proposals for the renewable power production sector in 2014 "as part of a second phase of reforms" following the liberalization of mainstream generation.
The government wishes to create an energy sector that is 30 percent powered by renewable energy by 2030, which will include 10 percent of the sector's power coming from residential energy self generation.
It intends to create either a net billing or net metering system with a grid tie-in, via a legislative update, to incentivize renewable energy. The benefit of tying into the grid for the consumer is that he or she can offload extra power produced into the national grid rather than needing batteries to store it, which can be the most expensive component of a renewable system.
Notwithstanding this incentivizing effect of a grid tie-in, Renward Wells, parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Works and Urban Development, has since clarified that the government has determined it will not allow commercial entities to tie their renewable systems into the grid in the "short term".
Admitting that exactly how long the "short term" is has yet to be defined by the government in relation to the issue of energy reform, he described the move as "a strategic decision given current debt obligations" of BEC.
These obligations suggest the entity needs a steady flow of revenue, which he proposed could be jeopardized if large power consumers went "off the grid".
However, Holdom said that the government need not worry too much about this outcome due to already existing limitations to the quantity of renewable power which will be produced.
"It's already been capped. The fact is they've committed to not have more than 30 percent of all generation produced by renewable energy, and its capped again by the ability of people to purchase these systems. The amount of people who can afford to buy these systems is a small percentage."
Holdom expressed concern that The Bahamas is at a "pivotal point" with respect to renewable energy and must be careful to make the right decisions or face "screwing it up" in the long term.
Echoing the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC), Holdom called for the government to set out on paper its full policy position on various elements of energy reform, so as to enable transparency and proper review.
"Stakeholders need to see it. We have the expertise to say 'these are the pros and cons and this is how it will affect our business'. My greatest concern is they will get this wrong and destroy the industry."

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