Barbados is a step closer to launching its first procurement project for Battery Energy Storage Systems to support the grid and unlock stalled Solar PV connections.
The Ministry of Energy and Business is currently hosting a three-day Procurement Design Workshop with key stakeholders to discuss and make critical decisions with regard to procuring Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).
Barbados has reached the maximum capacity of the electric grid and the Barbados Light and Power Company has been advising that it is unable to connect homeowners and residential PV systems to the grid without the addition of storage.
The workshop is the culmination of the outputs of a consortium of experts in storage systems, who began supporting Barbados at the beginning of 2024 to address the gridlock challenge and advance the renewable energy transition.
In brief opening remarks at the Warrens Office Complex, on Friday, Minister of Energy and Business, Senator Lisa Cummins, said: "This has been an absolutely urgent priority for our Government, and the partners have spent a lot of time collaborating with my amazing team because they understand how critical this is.
"The discussions over the next few days will take us into closure on the process where we can get battery energy storage systems into the country. In many ways this is a watershed moment that many have been waiting for."
Minister of Energy Senator Lisa Cummins is expecting both local and international bids as Barbados moves closer to its first procurement for battery energy storage systems (BESS) which will unlock the grid and allow for the onboarding of renewable energy.
The government, through the Ministry of Energy and partners, is giving Barbadians and other entities the opportunity to respond to a Call for Request for Information (RFI) for new battery storage capacity. The Call for RFI is the stage prior to the launch of the Competitive Procurement Process for the implementation of 60 megawatts of battery energy storage systems.
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Regulators in the Eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados have opened up a pathway for the widespread deployment of energy storage.
Barbados is targeting becoming a 100% renewable energy and carbon neutral economy by 2030. It currently depends on imported fossil fuels for the vast majority of its power generation. In 2018, Barbados spent US$253 million on importing fuels.
In order to support reaching the ambitious goal, authorities have identified energy storage as a critical tool that can also drive investment in the economy.
Towards the end of June, the independent British Commonwealth country''s Fair Trading Commission (FTC), ordered that a four-year pilot deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS) should be conducted.
While that means it will be a tight timeline for stakeholders including main utility Barbados Power & Light to take learnings from the pilot to scaled deployment, even large-scale BESS projects can be executed in as little as six months, although typically the timeline is closer to around 18 months.
Totalling 50MW across multiple systems of different sizes, the FTC said BESS installations of 4-hour, 3-hour and 2-hour duration should be used to gather data on the functioning of energy storage systems and the value they can provide to the electricity grid.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news last August, the government of Barbados created a national energy storage policy, and at that time, Minister of Energy Kerrie Symmonds said energy storage could unlock billions of dollars in investment.
The new pilot programme is based on a roadmap created through those efforts, while the FTC is also determining pilot tariffs and a framework for energy storage deployment.
The first two years of the pilot will see design, procurement, installation and grid connection of the BESS equipment, the remaining two years will cover their operation and the gathering of relevant data to assess project performance and technological viability.
Projects will receive the FTC''s storage tariff, as long as they meet a defined criteria of "used and useful".
The list of services is as follows:
The FTC wants to test a range of system sizes. Tariffs range from Bds$0.675/kWh (US$0.33/kWh) or Bds$56.78/kW-month for systems up to 25kW, to Bds$0.270/kWh and Bds$30.34/kW-month for systems >1MW and 10MW.
Successful projects of this type have been executed in regions with similar profiles to Barbados. One example is Bermuda, where a 10MW/5.5MWh BESS providing reserve capacity to the local grid was completed in 2019.
Stephanie Simons, an engineer with Bermudan utility BELCO told Energy-Storage.news at the time that the project was a "no brainer" from both a technical and economic standpoint in terms of the value it provided to the island''s energy system operation. In other words, the technology lowered costs while increasing reliability of supply of energy, Simons said.
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Barbados has made significant headway in its quest to have its first procurement project for battery energy storage systems.
Minister of Energy and Business, Senator Lisa Cummins, said tremendous work had been undertaken to get the team to this point. During a recent press conference, at the end of her Ministry''s three-day Procurement Design Workshop with key partners, she stated that the entire pipeline had been contemplated for the introduction of battery energy storage systems.
Senator Cummins stated: "Based on the work that they (consortium of experts in storage systems) have already done, we can now identify where across the country we need to deploy battery energy storage systems in order to relieve congestion.
"The work is under way, and we’re closer now than we’ve ever been before to getting the first battery energy storage system."
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