By
Luis Araujo
Trinidad
Guardian
Port
Spain
Petroleumworld.com
02 26 06
To
put it simply, the Caribbean is wasting its natural resources.
James Husbands, CEO of Barbados-based Solar Dynamics, believes
that solar power can produce hot water necessary for all of
the Caribbean’s hotel rooms.
Solar
Dynamics began operations in 1976 and now has two plants—Barbados
and St Lucia—offering commercial and residential products
and exports to the OECS from the St Lucia plant grew last year.
For
the hospitality industry the switch to solar water heating would
be no easy feat—The Caribbean has about 260,000-plus rooms
that each need about 40 gallons of hot water a day. And, that’s
just for taking baths.
“Increased
use of energy is inevitable as we expand,” Husbands told
a regional conference in Puerto Rico earlier this month. “It
is therefore vital that we draw on all sources of energy.”
Water
is typically heated through natural gas and diesel and Husbands
has calculated that, at an average cost of US$.020 per kilowatt/hour,
Caribbean hotels spend about US$104 million a year to heat water.
That’s
in 2006. The Caribbean, like the rest of the world is facing
increasing oil prices and Husbands said that with a estimate
increase of about 15 per cent a year, that US$104 million could
turn into US$422 million by 2016.
Husbands
said it would take about US$300 million to set up the infrastructure
to provide ten million gallons of hot water.
There
would still be need for traditional methods to supply about
two per cent of the needs, to act as a back up.
“We
should treat it as an investment. We don’t have to look
at the capital cost on its own,” he said.
“If
we had someone who was willing to invest into putting in hot
water systems in every hotel room across the region and someone
said, ‘Okay, I don’t have the capital but want to
have it.’ This is an opportunity for significant return
on investment.”
Some
hotels around the Caribbean are already using solar heating.
Husbands’
presentation has come at a time when Caribbean countries are
struggling to cope with high oil prices.
While
he maintained that hotels need to cut down on the electricity
they are using, Dr Vincent Adams of the US Department of Energy
said that the answer lies in reducing dependence on oil and
gas.
PetroCaribe,
he said, has its benefits but the region needs to focus on renewable
energy.
“There
are great short-term benefits but we need to make sure that
governments don’t become complacent and forget renewables,”
Adams said.
“We
need to take advantage of the benefits accrued by the deal but
more aggressively pursue renewables.”
In
discussions after the presentation, Husbands said that many
attempts at solar heating in the Caribbean have failed because
the systems that were installed were not big enough to carry
the load. Many people fail to take into account how much water
is needed at peak times, for example.
He
added that there are uses for solar power but since solar water
heating was one of the easiest applications, the Caribbean needs
to start there.
“If
you can’t get water heating right, you’re not going
to get air conditioning right,” he said.
