WHILE BARBADOS LIGHT & POWER (BL&P) managing director Mark King was at pains to emphasize that his company was not trying to stifle the growth of the alternative energy sector, it is very apparent that in his comments two days ago King was speaking based on the assurance that BL&P would continue to be the lone vendor of energy in this country – to be more precise, a continuing monopoly.
Addressing one of the company’s Let’s Talk sessions with the media at its Bay Street headquarters, King explained that photovoltaic and wind systems were intermittent in nature, since they depended on weather patterns that affected sunshine and wind. Therefore, he reasoned, since Light & Power’s grid must remain stable and that at every instance in time the load must exactly match the generation, such systems would collapse.
Sounds “as simple as that” on the surface. But what was noteworthy was that the managing director later added that the BL&P would bring in experts to do an intermittency study to find out “more definitively” how much the Barbados network could truly handle.
We dare to ask whether this kind of limited thinking belongs in the 21st century where free market policy is the norm, where expertise is available at the click of a mouse, and where other countries have been successfully using alternative energy without earth-shattering instances of collapsing intermittent systems.
We suggest that renewable energy expertise can indeed be sourced by the Government, since BL&P itself does not currently possess such expertise and has to start from the proverbial square one.
This country also can, as it did with the telecommunications sector, draft and approve legislation that would facilitate the entrance of at least one other renewable energy player into the market. It would in turn create the competition that would benefit local consumers who cry out daily about energy costs and see no end in sight for ever-rising BL&P bills.
Meanwhile, King’s apparent confidence in the continued monopoly leaves one to wonder whether sentimentality over the company’s presence in the market for over 100 years means more than consumers’ daily pain.
We now need to hear a united voice from those entrepreneurs offering alternative energy systems, and whether they can indeed afford to offer and maintain them at an affordable price.
With Government’s smart funds and other grants that should address the issue of initial costs of photovoltaic and wind systems, this issue does not have to drag on under the burden of BL&P’s view that there is “no quick fix”.
Government has stated that renewable energy is the centrepiece of its economic strategy, so why is such grave doubt being created by those without the necessary expertise to implement that strategy?
Must no one else get a piece of the pie – oops, grid?