BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, NOVEMBER 24TH 2014 (CUOPM) – The Federal Government-owned St. Kitts Electricity Corporation (SKELEC), has commissioned an Intermittent Renewable Energy Infusion Study to inform on the optimum level of energy infusion.
“The study recommends about 20% infusion in the conditions at which we currently operate. This is by no means a hard ceiling. We can accommodate more in the future but we prefer to take a responsible approach while we retain the confidence of the customer in SKELEC’s service. As time goes by we will gradually increase the infusion level and retain steady state operation,” said Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr. Cartwright Farrell.
He hold hundreds attending the “Conversations For Progress,” at the Brown Hill Basketball Court that in comparison Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands did a similar study and they have adopted 4.13MW infusion compared to 4.4MW infusion in St. Kitts and their peak is higher.
Mr. Farrell said that SKELEC is just about to roll out its smart meter programme and SCADA system.
“We did a pilot for the smart meters and now we are about to start the full rollout. This is in an effort to smarten the grid. With the smart meters we will read meters remotely without anyone having to go out to the meter. There will be a function added where the customer can prepay for their electricity much like the telephone concept. There will be measures put in place to ensure that customers do not get a sudden shut-off. Later these same meters can allow functions from your mobile device to manage the appliances at home. This function will be well down the road,” said Mr. Farrell.
He pointed out that for the SCADA system, SKELEC will be able to restore power to all areas remotely from the power station.
“This cuts down on the outage time for customers. The outage will report itself back to the operator right away so again response is swifter. This will lead to an outage management system. Overall the integration of renewable energy will be better facilitated. The SCADA portion of the End-to-end project will facilitate distributed generation such as the model that obtains with renewable energy generation and which is the future model of electric utilities,” said Mr. Farrell.
He said this has been an approach of identifying the challenges, making policy to deal with the challenges and taking leadership in addressing the challenges.
“We believe in time as we are able to develop the right energy sources, married with responsible energy conservation and efficiency, then we would have moved a long way towards providing relief to the citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis the high cost of energy.
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