JAMAICANS no longer have a good reason to complain about high electricity bills, says Roger Chang, president of the Jamaica Solar Energy Association. A cheaper alternative is available.
“There is no valid reason for complaining of high electricity cost. Because there is an option and that option is solar panel systems. It will produce electricity at a ‘levelised’ cost of electricity of just around US10 cents per Kilowatt hour (kWh),” Chang told the Rotary Club of Spanish Town at the Police Officers Club in St Andrew.
“And when you factor in the other costs, the other tariffs, it will work out somewhere between another seven to nine cent. So you are looking at maybe US19 cents per kWh which is still less than half of JPS,” he said.
Insisting that renewable energy is the way to go, Chang argued that when one looks at the cost of electricity over the lifespan of 25 years it works out to about US10 cent per kWh. Consumers are now paying JPS over US45 cents per kWh. “Four times as much.”
However, Chang, who has been involved with solar panels since the 1980s, admitted that there is a place for the Jamaica Public Service.
“If we are talking in the context of solar panels as a renewable energy source, then you will need JPS to make the renewable energy source cost effective and viable. What we effectively have been doing is using the JPS as a battery, as a backup battery. So JPS is cheaper than you can buy and maintain our own batteries,” Chang said.
“You don’t use solar panel as a backup system. It is not cost effective that way,” he cautioned, adding, “It doesn’t make sense that you buy solar panels and batteries and invest hundreds of thousands on a backup system that you don’t use.
JPS rates have not gone down significantly for a very long time, partly because the OUR (Office of Utilities Regulations) has mandated that they should concentrate on making the grid more stable, with fewer power cuts.
“We don’t get power cut as we used to before,” Chang said. “So, a solar panel system with batteries as a backup is not worth it anymore.”
Under a complicated formula, JPS will soon start paying small power genera-tors between US20 cents and US26 cents for electricity they feed into the grid.
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