The V.I. Water and Power Authority Governing Board convened Wednesday and approved a pair of energy storage services agreements with STF Solar for the Fortuna and Bovoni solar farms.
WAPA Chief Executive Karl Knight said that “despite the efforts of the current Trump administration to disincentivize solar production, it’s still very advantageous to us here in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
“It still makes good sense to us, because we do not have a lot of indigenous resources, and we’re still very much dependent on the importation of fuel oil — and now propane,” he said. “Having indigenous sources of energy are actually in our best interest for a variety of reasons. Foremost, we’re still a part of the country where we can produce solar power for less expense than our fossil fuel generation.”
Knight said the incorporation of solar energy also reduces the demand on generating units and frees up time to perform much-needed maintenance.
“Certainly … there’s an environmental benefit to these projects,” he added. “They reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again, I’m going to throw a little barb: we know all too well here in the Caribbean region that the impact — although we don’t contribute much to … global greenhouse gas emissions — we are often the victims of some of that impact, whether it’s sargassum, whether it’s increasing intensity of storms. We can see the high water temperatures that make this time of year increasingly more risky for us. Whether you attribute it to climate change or not, the fact is there are things that are occurring in the climate that we have to adapt to … and we believe that this helps us do our small part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the global level.”
WAPA Board Chair Maurice Muia was the sole member to vote against the agreements. After the votes, he acknowledged that the territory’s investment in renewable energy “is one of the best decisions that we have made.”
“What I will say is that although that is important for the Virgin Islands and our partners — to be able to provide that for the authority and customers of the authority — we need to ensure that when we work through the financial aspect, the operational aspect, we understand the true costs, what it’s saving the authority, what it’s saving the customers, and ultimately, having good bilateral terms and conditions that benefit both parties,” he said.
After presenting the proposed agreements to the board Wednesday, Knight acknowledged past concerns that the utility could end up paying for the same energy twice — once for the lease and once for power discharged from the batteries. Under the utility’s power purchase agreement, Knight said, WAPA pays 11 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy from the solar farm and 5.45 cents per kilowatt-hour for excess power introduced to the energy grid from the storage system, “and those are metered separately and charged as separate line items by the solar farm.”
“We’ve looked at the total output from the solar farm, and we have come to the conclusion, along with our partners that have helped us do the analysis, that ultimately this is in the best interest of our ratepayers and has a positive economic impact on the authority and the ratepayers,” he said.
Wednesday’s votes came after the board spent approximately two hours in executive session discussing legal matters.
St. Croix Source
Local news
