Jamaica's Shocking Electricity Trend - The Case for Mega Watt Scale Solar

ColideZ Sweet Music Jamaica Tech Life

Given the current cost of electricity it has become important that Jamaica seeks to invest substantially in megawatt scale solar in an effort to impact the nations productivity. While this idea is nothing new and there have been many advocates for the introduction of such facilities I would like to personally put it on the front pages for myself.

The chart below shows how powerless the nations electricity company has been in its ability to deliver cheap energy to the nation. Current electricity cost is driven primarily by the Fuel and IPP charges.

Jamaicans as a result can easily project increased cost in their electricity bill over the next few years and it is quite possible that in the very near future Jamaicans can be expected to pay close to or above JM$50.00 per kilowatt hour (KWh).

With cost of solar generated electricity potentially reaching below JM$12.00 per KWh if the investment cost is distributed over 20 years the savings to the country can be immense if such a road is pursued correctly.

Low electricity cost could be easily achieved for daytime consumption if solar power is heavily integrated into the energy mix. If the cost per watt of installed capacity is competitively driven to below US$1.40 and this is feasible given current technology and system costs, Solar Power Plant developers could potentially realize electricity unit cost sale to the Jamaica Public Service of under JM$16 per KWh to the grid and still be profitable over a 20 year life span of a plant.

This is something to consider. The implications also go beyond the fact that electricity cost are high leading to high productions cost but the fact that the exchange rate is at risk this is added reason for Jamaica to deeply investigate Mega Watt scale solar.

Here is a list of potential solar Energy companies to do it.

Jamaican Solar Installation Players

Alternative Energy Plus (AES)
Alternative Power Sources Ltd. - (APS)
Any Thing Solar
ATL
Automatic Control Engineering
FosRich
GetSol
Gorman
Iree Solar
Isratech
JPS - E Store
New Leaf
Pegasus Traders
RED
Simpower
Solar Direk
Sun Source

Several of these companies have installed systems in excess of 50KW while some companies have cumulative installations exceeding 500KW. There might be even one company that has installed over 1MW of solar in its time of operation.

When one considers the facts that Jamaica's fuels and oil imports is approximately 80,000 barrels of oil per day and in 2008 this contributed to an Oil Import Bill of over US$2.7 billion whilst in 2011 a bill of US$2.4 billion and the 2013 bill is expected to be in excess of US$2 billion.

The capabilities is here and experience is growing. The government should seek to build on this and give the local companies the opportunity to invest and contribute to the development of the nation.

Translating Publicity into Prosperity

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Case for MW Solar