The mission of Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) is to provide reliable, cost-effective, and safe electricity to ensure the continued growth and prosperity of The Bahamas. The vision shaping the strategy of how best to meet this mission is ambitious: lead the Caribbean Islands in energy innovation and sustainability, setting new standards in grid reliability and environmental stewardship.
Bringing such a vision into commercial reality is no doubt a complex and challenging task. And that’s why I am so excited to see Encorp’s concept of “Microgrid for the Masses ™ ” coming into reality for BPL, serving as a model for the rest of the world how to leverage the private sector to serve the greater public interest.
What is the concept all about? Check out this description on the Encorp website. In a nutshell, this approach to microgrid development puts the customer in the driver’s seat – not the other way around, which is often the case when large multi-nationals drive the development process. The customer is free to buy whatever solar photovoltaic panels or batteries or generators they want, and Encorp will tie these assets together through its modular Encorp Egility platform and squeeze the most value out of each asset to serve whatever the client wants. The microgrid can focus on resiliency, cost savings or carbon reductions – or all three goals and more.
The Bahamas consists of 271 islands, many of which are extremely small and most unpopulated. BPL provides energy services to 17 populated islands with 29 existing power stations. The overarching goal for BPL today is to meet the Paris Accord’s target of 30% clean energy generation by 2030.
BPL cannot reach its Paris Accord targets alone. It must rely upon private sector partners collaborating in an intelligent and strategic way. BPL is relying upon independent power producers (IPPs) to reduce project development risk and protect its ratepayers as it seeks to develop new renewable and cleaner fossil fuel power generation facilities to replace aging and inefficient energy supply infrastructure.
Yet BPL also needs a common platform to optimize these diverse power stations and new microgrids to meet the targets and maintain continued power service during hurricanes. Over 20 hurricanes have impacted the Bahamas to date, underscoring the need for resiliency and real-time data to orchestrate and optimize BPL’s power supply portfolio.
The answer? Well, you can read the white paper written and published by long-time microgrid expert Peter Asmus, President of Pathfinder Communications, here. To boil it all down, a single controls platform allows BPL to orchestrate assets no matter which independent power producer has installed the DER assets in which microgrid. All told, a mix of 52 megawatts (MW) of liquified natural gas (LNG) generators, 48 MW of solar photovoltaics (PV) and 35 MW of battery energy storage systems will replace aging diesel generators, some of which are more than 30 years old.
The finishing touch on the “Microgrid for the Masses ™ ” program in the Bahamas is that along with its Egility microgrid controls platform, Encorp will also provide visual touchscreen dashboards, allowing BPL utility to monitor real-time performance of all its 29 power stations. Using live, real-time data, the interactive touchscreens can showcase each energy resource controlled by the Egility platform and their relative contributions to the power supply of an individual microgrid — as well as to the entire new microgrid fleet.
