The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government already possesses proposals that will generate 50 per cent more solar energy than what is being targeted via the Carbon War Room (CWR) tender, Tribune Business was told yesterday.

Guilden Gilbert, vice-president of Alternative Power Sources (APS) Bahamas, told this newspaper that the international consortium his company was part of had never withdrawn its bid submitted in response to a previously-cancelled tender.

While that Request for Proposal (RFP) was annulled because it was not approved by Cabinet, Mr Gilbert said his group had offered to provide a total 30 Mega Watts (MW) of solar power on 15 Family Islands.

Each solar photovoltaic (PV) farm would have generated 2 MW, and Mr Gilbert said the consortium featuring APS was prepared to rework its numbers and submit a revised bid when the Government and CWR release their revised tender.

“They’re looking at 20 MW,” he told Tribune Business. “That deal we had on the table under the Energy Task Force was for 30 MW - 15 systems of 2 MW - which were fully dispatchable, providing power 24 hours a day and at no cost to the country.

“We would have provided all the financing and delivered power at 23 cents per kilowatt hour.”

That would represent at least a 42.5 per cent discount to recent Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) prices, which have averaged around 40 cents per KWh.

Mr Gilbert said APS’s partners were ZF Energy Developers, based in Washington DC and Philadelphia, and installers Nation’s Roof, the largest US roofing company.

He added that APS’s partners had installed 200 MW of solar PV capacity worldwide, including in Africa, and told Tribune Business: “We never took that proposal off the table.”

While Mr Gilbert’s comments could be interpreted as telling the Government: ‘Don’t reinvent the wheel’, and that a new tender process is not necessary, he disclosed that the group was prepared to submit a revised offer once the new RFP’s terms were released.

“I am somewhat surprised,” he said of the Government/CWR decision to launch a new process. “I knew they withdrew the bid launched by the Energy Task Force as it did not have Cabinet approval, but the reality is proposals are in already.

“We can rework the numbers when the new RFP is released. Clearly, the Energy Task Force must have had it right if the CWR is recommending the same thing. We have the capacity to do whatever MW the Government requires; the size and cost of systems doesn’t matter. We can finance the deal.”

Mr Gilbert said he had spoken to ZF Energy Developers yesterday morning, and the group will “definitely submit a bid”.

Solar farms are being targeted for Eleuthera, Andros, Cat Island, Acklins, Bimini, Inagua, Crooked Island, Exuma and Long Island, as part of the Government’s partnership with the Washington-based CWR, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). They will produce a total capacity of 20 MW.

Mr Gilbert said the Government’s decision to team with the CWR and move ahead with the RFP would benefit the whole Bahamas, as it held out the promise of a lower-cost, more reliable, sustainable and environmentally-friendly energy supply.

While solar power was “the low hanging fruit”, Mr Gilbert added that technologies such as wind, tidal and ocean thermal energy also merited exploration and an assessment of the existing technologies.

“I just think we need to look outside the traditional ways of generating power, and if employment is the issue, I definitely believe the renewable energy sector can provide employment,” he told Tribune Business.

“It’s [the tender] a move in the right direction, and I hope with the tender document going out that the turnaround time in dealing with the bids will be short.

“We often see the Government dragging its feet on these decisions. They get the documents in and don’t make a decision. It doesn’t make sense to go out to tender and let the documents remain sitting around for months on end. If we’re serious, let’s move forward and proceed.”

Christopher Burgess, CWR’s operations manager for islands, told Tribune Business that the 20 MW goal was an aggregation of all the solar farms to be constructed.

“It’s really a win-win scenario. Right now, the understanding is that the Family Islands are subsidised to a great degree, somewhere between 20 and 30 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh),” he said.

“The goal of the RFP process is to find firms that we know have a solid track record, that can install the capacity needed to first stabilise, and then lower, the cost.

“Where we get is a matter of the request for proposals (RFPs) going out and seeing where that price is in the market. The goal is to get it under the current subsidised rate. We would like to be in the low 20’s or high teens [per KWh], but we will have to see what the RFP brings.”