As the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) yesterday unveiled a solar project which would save it almost $1 million in power costs per year, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds announced that the Amaila Falls hydroelectricity project should begin by mid-2013.
“No later than the middle of next year, everything should be in place and ground should be broken and maybe 42 months later we should be receiving our first hydroelectricity. Those are our thinking and our plans today and I would say today, that today they are much more realistic than some time ago because we have crossed a number of hurdles some of which we did not anticipate earlier,” he said. Asked later by Stabroek News whether the hurdles crossed included financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Prime Minister said that he understands that “good progress is being made on that.” The Amaila project first surfaced on the government’s radar around 2000.
Officials of Sithe Global- the developer for the project- some months ago had stated that the IDB support was critical, while adding that it would have spelt certain doom for the project should it not be forthcoming. In January, Sithe Global officials had reported that financial closure for the project would have come by June 2012. However, in a letter published in the press in June, they said financial closure is not possible before 2013, although they noted that their lenders remain supportive of the project.
Yesterday, Hinds said that renewable energy is the direction the world and Guyana is heading towards. “But it is not going to be cheaper energy than today, it’s not gonna be easier energy than today, it’s gonna require more capital investment…” he said.
The GEA project unveiled yesterday was done with support from the German Agency for Development Coopera-tion, GIZ, and the Austrian Development Cooperation. The objectives of the $7.4 million, 8.46 kilowatt Grid Tie Solar Photovoltaic Demonstration Project is to promote the use of renewable energy in Guyana, gain understanding of grid tie opportunities and demonstrate the use and application of solar photovoltaic grid tie technology. The system is made up of 36 panels each rated at 235 watts which are mounted on a shed in the GEA’s Quamina Street compound. The system interfaces with the Guyana Power and Light’s grid via a grid-tie inverter.
“The power supplied from the solar panels is about 20% of the power demand of the load from the building, so during a regular business day, the grid-tie inverter senses the amount of energy coming from the solar panels; measures the amount of energy being consumed by the building and then takes the difference from the grid,” Mahender Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer of the GEA, explained. He said that on holidays and weekends when the load of the building is less than the power supplied from the solar panels, most of the energy is supplied to the grid.
Sharma said that the system should generate approximately 13,895 kilowatt hours of renewable energy per year and would result in savings of $914,429 per annum. “While the total cost of this demonstration project was $7.4 million, if we were to remove the costs associated with demonstration, monitoring and education, the simple payback for the project, based on a capital cost of $6.3 million would be just under seven years,” he said adding that solar panels usually have a lifetime of between 15 to 25 years depending on care and maintenance. He said that for those who would like to own their own systems, this translates to an average cost of $745 per watt installed.
Sharma said that the renewable energy produced would result in the reduction of 11,116 kilos of carbon dioxide emissions per year. He said that while there are two examples of solar PV connected to isolated mini-grids at Port Kaituma and Mahdia, for the first time in Guyana, this project provides a working example of the incorporation of renewable energy technology into the national electric grid using grid feed-in technology.
The GEA head encouraged the private sector to seriously consider the incorporation of similar systems and said that the agency would be more than willing to provide advice to interested parties.
