Barbados regulators target 100% renewable economy by 2030
Regulators in the Eastern Caribbean island 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 most of its power generation. In 2018, Barbados spent US$253 million on imported fuels.
To support reaching the ambitious goal, authorities have identified energy storage as a critical tool that can drive economic investment.
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 leading 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. However, 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.
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