JPS raises roof on new energy prospects
Published:Monday | July 18, 2022 | 12:07 AM
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The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) says it is willing to pursue rooftop power-generation arrangements with property owners, particularly in Kingston and St Thomas, who would produce electricity through renewable energy and sell to the grid....
The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) says it is willing to pursue rooftop power-generation arrangements with property owners, particularly in Kingston and St Thomas, who would produce electricity through renewable energy and sell to the grid.
However, the company indicated that this would be a different scheme from the current limited net-billing exercise where residential customers sell excess generating capacity to the grid.
Chief financial officer at the JPS, Vernon Douglas, told a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last week that the company was taking a serious look at the prospects of increasing its generating capacity through this proposed venture.
“We think that it is probably the most near-term thing that as a country we should be looking at, and we as the single buyer would be quite bullish in entering arrangements ... with parties whereby in a buy-all, sell-all mechanism, rooftop owners produce electricity to sell it to the grid,” he said.
Douglas explained that the existing mechanism involves customers who are producing energy for themselves.
“Many rooftops are not occupied by the owners, so therefore the existing mechanism is about net billing, where you own the building and you are selling the net to the grid.
“And that’s not necessarily where we are bullish. We think that many rooftops, the tenants are different from the owners of the buildings,” Douglas added.
The JPS believes that generating solar energy on rooftops is more ideal than using productive farmlands.
On July 6 this year, Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, indicated that several private investors had submitted proposals for renewable energy projects in Jamaica.
The state-run Jamaica Information Service reported that the projects were expected to assist in realising the Government’s goal of increasing the ratio of energy generated from renewable options for the national power grid to 50 per cent by 2030.
Samuda indicated that there were sufficient funding proposals to enable the country to achieve the power-generation target. He said an announcement on the successful submissions could be made within the next two months.
However, Michel Gantois, president and chief executive officer of the JPS, noted that the only legal formal avenues for adding capacity to the national grid are through the right-of-first-refusal, which is set out in the licence granted to the JPS.
“We are waiting for the tender for either additional or replacement capacity, and we haven’t seen it, so we assume that those were just unsolicited proposals,” he said at a Gleaner Editors’ forum.
“We are looking at that, by the way, because eventually, if some proposals win, especially renewable, we will be the party having to potentially put additional investment in transmission lines, for example, to make sure that power produced somewhere in the island is brought to the consumption centre,” Gantois said.
Quizzed on the number of large industrial and commercial customers who have been involved in generating energy for themselves, Gantois said that 35 of them have been using renewable energy while still connected to the national grid.
He said that the JPS has renewed its efforts to have better dialogue with large industrial companies to ensure that it provides them with the best technical service.