Six sites are to be assessed for wind energy potential under grant funding from two agencies.
A notice from the Ministry of Public Infrastructure in the July 24th edition of Stabroek News is seeking expressions of interest for the provision of advisory services to the Project Implementation Unit (PIU). These services will facilitate the selection of six sites with the appropriate wind energy potential, setting up of wind data collection equipment and to aid with the analysis of data from four of the selected sites.
The notice said that it is estimated that the selection of the sites will require two months of work mainly in Guyana. Wind data from the selected sites will be gathered by the PIU for analysis on a quarterly basis over a year.
Funding is being provided by the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility for Guyana’s sustainable energy programme.
Expressions of interest must be delivered by July 31st to the Hinterland Electrification Co. Inc. to the attention of Horace Williams – Project Coordinator, Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Wight’s Lane, Kingston. The email address is heu@electricity.gov.gy .
Wind energy has been on the agenda here for years but without much commercial success.
In June, 2014 Prime Minister Sam Hinds, with responsibility for energy, in a letter to this newspaper had recounted Guyana’s recent attempts on this front.
He noted that decades ago, there were small wind-driven electricity-generating sets along the coast, and water pumps on the savannahs in the hinterland. In 2000, he pointed out that the Caribbean Development Bank financed an engineering survey of the potential of wind along the coast for the large-scale production of electricity. The prospects, he said, were judged to be “not fantastic” but, still possibly, economically attractive.
As a result, Delta Caribbean of Curaçao which had established a wind farm in Curaçao was invited to study the possibilities of wind farms along Guyana’s coast. Hinds said that Delta Caribbean began their appraisal with a year-long study of wind speeds at Hope Beach on the East Coast of Demerara and also studied various generators available then to see how they would perform in the local wind regime. Hinds said that up to about 2006, a project could not be put together which would be financially attractive to all parties, and Delta Caribbean withdrew, passing on all its rights to a new local company, Guyana Wind-Farms Inc.
He said that Guyana Wind-Farm Inc had later put forward a very attractive project which could see GoldWind of China, rated at least third in the world in the establishment of wind farms, setting up a 10×2.5 MW wind farm at Hope Beach for a total cost of about US$42 million. Gold Wind would provide 75% of total financing and take 51% of the equity shares. He added that Republic Bank had offered to support the project, with a US$2 million loan. It is unclear if this project is still on the agenda.
