The Tribune

By FAY SIMMONS

TRIBUNE Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power & Light’s (BPL) executive chairman yesterday revealed that Ragged Island's $5.5m renewable energy system is currently offline after its inverters and system controller failed, forcing the island back on to diesel generation.

Christina Alston told the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants' (BICA) accountants’ week seminars that the system, launched as a 100 percent renewable energy project in 2019, had encountered technical challenges that highlighted the difficulty of relying entirely on intermittent solar generation.

“Right now, Ragged Island is offline. The inverters failed. The system controller failed, and so now we're back on diesel,” she said. The BPL chair said the system cost around $5.5m to serve fewer than 100 people, describing it as “an extraordinary investment”.

“We're going to fix it because we're already, you know, it's in for a penny, in for a pound. You already spent the money. Let's go back and fix it,” she said.

Ms Alston said the experience had provided important lessons for BPL as it works to integrate renewable generation and battery energy storage (BESS) systemns across The Bahamas' electricity systems. “The lessons learned coming out of it are really, really important,” she said.

The BPL chair said The Bahamas has around 1,500 hours of solar irradiance, compared with the 8,760 hours during which electricity is generated, creating a gap that must be addressed through other generation sources and storage.

Ms Alston said the challenge is not simply installing solar panels, but ensuring that renewable systems can operate reliably alongside existing generation infrastructure.

She pointed to the April 2025 power failure in Spain, which she said demonstrated the technical challenges that could arise when a grid relied heavily on intermittent renewable energy without adequate system support.

Ms Alston said battery energy storage was being considered as a way to bridge renewable generation and traditional baseload power, while control systems will be critical to ensuring that different technologies operated together. “Renewables as an intermittent resource are an engineering challenge,” she added.

Ms Alston said BPL was also learning from the integration of solar generation, battery storage and natural gas engines on Abaco and Eleuthera, where new facilities must operate in concert with existing generation to avoid disruptions to customers.

She added that BPL had specified battery storage use cases, communication protocols and control systems in its power purchase agreements (PPAs), alongside technical requirements for connecting renewable facilities to the grid.

Ms Alston said The Bahamas' electricity systems varied significantly in size and operating conditions, meaning that solutions suitable for one island could not necessarily be replicated on another.

“We have systems from 250 kW all the way to 350 mega watts,” she said. Ms Alston said Ragged Island's system will be repaired, while the experience would inform BPL’s approach to future renewable energy projects.