Arguing that given the current inefficiencies in the electricity production and distribution system, it takes approximately two barrels of oil to keep a 100-watt light bulb burning continuously for a year, the think tank said using coal-generated energy to do the same job would reduce the cost significantly.
“Using LNG instead of oil would cost roughly half the amount to burn the light bulb, and using coal would be about one-seventh the cost,” the group said.
The think tank said using current prices, it would cost US$178.70 to purchase two barrels of oil to power the incandescent bulb. It said if coal were to be utilised to do a similar job, it would take only 396 kilograms (871lb) of the product at a cost of US$23.8, or 13 per cent of the cost of oil. The think tank also said liquefied natural gas (LNG) would be a more expensive option to coal. The researchers argue that it would require 333 litres of LNG to power the same 100-watt bulb, which would cost US$83.3, or 47 per cent of the cost of oil.
See full column http://gleaner-ja.com/gleaner/20120423/news/news2.html.
‘Using LNG instead of oil would cost roughly half the amount to burn the light bulb, and using coal would be about one-seventh the cost.’
About 871lb of coal is needed to power a 100-watt light bulb for 12 months.
Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell said the advances were made by the new Government as early as February. He said he has had discussions with his Trinidad and Tobago counterpart on the issue.
“We are trying to see if there can be an agreement at this stage in relation to the supply of LNG,” Paulwell told
The following question was asked recently by a concerned citizen.
How many litres of oil would be needed to run a 100-watt electric bulb consistently for one year? Similarly, how many kg of coal to accomplish the same thing?
On the surface of it, the answer could be calculated by any reasonably smart high-school physics student. We suspect however, given the source of the question, what was being sought was a deeper, more fundamental answer that goes to the core of the energy crisis that Jamaica now faces.
So, first, here’s the easy part. A barrel of oil, often referred to as barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) contains approximately 1.7 MWh of energy. Generation plants in the current JPS system extract approximately 35 per cent of the energy content of a barrel of oil (measured by the average heat rate) and convert it into electricity.
Transmission and distribution losses take away another 23 per cent of this energy before it gets to the customer’s premises. The light bulb ends up receiving 27 per cent (0.46 MWh) of the energy from the barrel of oil. Burning a 100W incandescent bulb for 24 hours a day and 365 days a year (not advisable) requires 876 KWh of energy (roughly equivalent to half-barrel of oil).
Very inefficient
Incidentally, the typical 100W incandescent bulb is very inefficient, converting less than 20 per cent of the energy consumed into visible light, the rest being dissipated as heat so that the amount of useful energy consumed from the barrel of oil in this scenario is really only five per cent.
Nevertheless, the initial answer to our question is that given the current inefficiencies in the electricity production and distribution system, it requires just about two barrels of oil to keep the light bulb burning continuously for a year.
This calculation holds whether the fuel source is oil, gas or coal. It will take 396 kg of coal and 333 litres of LNG to keep the light bulb burning for one year.
Using nominal trading prices for each fuel type indicates the relative costs. So, hypothetically speaking, all other things being equal (of course they’re not but the simplification suits the exercise), using LNG instead of oil would cost roughly half the amount to burn the light bulb, and using coal would be about 1/7th the cost.
The earlier analysis indicates that regardless of fuel, the Jamaican electricity production and distribution system only delivers approximately 27 per cent of the fuel purchased to the end consumer.
Consumers with poor energy conservation practices such as continuously burning incandescent bulbs, or inefficient building air-conditioning systems, contribute further to this energy waste. Jamaica’s oil bill in 2010 was 122 per cent of all export earnings.
A significant percentage of this oil bill is used to produce electricity and, on average, we waste 73 per cent of this costly commodity in delivering electricity to consumers.
What is even more perverse about this situation is the well-known fuel pass-through clause in the electricity tariff structure that requires the consumer to pay for the cost of fuel, regardless of how inefficient the procurement or conversion processes become. Is there a better way? Is there a model of electricity production and delivery that can begin to seriously impact on this seemingly perpetual, but clearly unsustainable situation.
Fundamental conversation needed
While the predominant local energy debates about LNG versus coal, and fuel diversity, are important issues; getting Jamaican industry to a competitive 10-15 US cents/KWh will require a more fundamental conversation about the structure of the industry and the way that usable energy is extracted from a barrel of oil or a tonne of coal.
We believe that there is a different industry model that could potentially suit small island states like Jamaica.
A model that takes advantage of new- generation technologies and more efficient industrial structures capable of delivering electricity at lower cost. A model that can extract more usable energy from the barrel of oil, the litre of LNG or the kg of coal to burn the light bulb while running the air conditioning and the water heater.
We believe such a model of electricity sector reform could potentially impact many of the prevailing issues and concerns currently being contemplated, such as:
providing more competitive industrial and commercial rates in the medium – long term
increasing the opportunities for domestic private-sector investment/participation in the electricity sector
providing increased fuel diversity as a natural consequence of investor-determined choices and risks
considerably reducing transmission/ distribution losses as a result of a more balanced distribution of supply and demand
creating practical opportunities for increasing the share of renewables in the supply of electricity.
Space doesn’t permit a more detailed examination of this conceptual model in this article. Suffice to say that it will require a deep commitment to the national interest and the willing participation of all stakeholders in the electricity sector, including the JPS, the OUR and GOJ, the local private sector, academia and consumers.
All have a role to play in helping to return sanity to a very troubled sector. We will complete the presentation and examination of this conceptual model in subsequent papers.
The government, in the next two weeks, will launch its energy efficiency and conservation programme, aimed at saving more that $2 billion per year in energy costs.
This was announced by Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Hon. Phillip Paulwell on April 19, 2012 as he addressed the opening of the Jamaica Power Summit 2012 at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.
To be financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Mr. Paulwell said the programme objective will be realised through the design and implementation of cost saving measures.
JAMAICA Public Service Company (JPS) has applied for a rate adjustment that could result in a 0.42 per cent increase in light bills.
In its submission to the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR), the light and power company suggested that it increase its non-fuel rates by an average of 2.09 per cent.
It also asked for an adjustment to the heat rate target that would result in a 1.55 per cent reduction in the fuel rate.
Given that the fuel component of the typical residential customer
Oil prices dropped Wednesday after the government said US supplies grew more than expected last week.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.53 to finish at $102.67 per barrel in New York, while Brent crude lost 81 cents to end at $117.97 per barrel in London.
The Energy Information Administration reported that US crude oil supplies grew by 3.9 million barrels last week. Analysts expected an increase of 400,000 barrels. The government’s weekly report also said that US oil demand dropped 2.7 per cent, gasolene demand fell 2.8 per cent, compared with a year ago.
Anemic demands
The data suggest that motorists aren’t filling up as much ahead of the summer driving season.
“You continue to see some pretty anaemic fuel demand levels” in the US, said Gene McGillian, a broker and oil analyst at Tradition Energy.
US retail gasolene prices dipped slightly to a national average of $3.899 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. The national average has declined by 2.6 cents this month, and it’s now just barely under $3.90 for the first time since March.
Experts say that gasolene prices have levelled off this month, but they’re likely to rise to around $4 per gallon during the next few weeks as more refiners switch to producing summer blends of fuel.
In other energy trading, heating oil gave up less than a penny to finish at $3.1182 per gallon and gasolene futures lost 3.13 cents to end at $3.2027 per gallon. Natural gas futures were unchanged at $1.9510 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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.
THE CARIBBEAN must cut greenhouse gas emission by 25 to 50 per cent by 2020 to avoid catastrophic climate change, warns environmentalist Bharrat Jagdeo.
Jagdeo’s comments come in the wake of a World Bank study, which determined sometime ago that 10 or 15 of the most vulnerable to climate conditions countries are in the Caribbean.
Criticising many of the decision makers in the region, who he accused of sleep-walking on the issue of climate change, the former Guyanese president made an alarming revelation that even after an intergovernmental panel determined that for the Caribbean to have a sustainable trajectory it had to limit global temperature to two degrees Celsius above green-industrial level by 2050, no such agreement had been signed.
“With an agreement we would have a 50 per cent probability of avoiding catastrophic climate change,” he suggested, while addressing delegates of the 13th annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development (STC-13), now on in Guyana.
“We’re currently on a pathway to four degrees rise in global temperature. At four degrees rise in global temperature above pre-industrial levels the forest will die naturally, the corals will die, the sea would rise, so we would lose most of our beaches in the Caribbean,” was how he described the devastation that could derail and undermine the region’s most important industry – tourism.
Blaming the developed world
The developed world did not escape the criticisms of Jagdeo, who blamed them for the failure to come up with an agreement that would lead the region on a path to sustainability.
“Right now we are in a global situation where we have had failures; lots of failures in Copenhagen, in Cancun and at Durban,” argued Jagdeo.
Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), Senator Richard ‘Ricky’ Skerritt concurred. In a message to stakeholders in the region, he said it was vital that the Caribbean becomes truly dedicated to sustainable tourism practices in order to maximise the economic benefits for all, including local communities, businesses, consumers and governments.
“It is now well established that tourism growth cannot be sustained unless today’s interests are balanced with the vital needs of tomorrow,” he stated, adding that this was why the CTO was playing such a leading role in promoting tourism awareness amongst its people.
The CTO chairman said there was a need to ensure that locals and visitors alike – for generations to come – can continue to enjoy the red-water rivers, spectacular waterfalls, majestic mountains, vast savannas, picturesque landscapes and indigenous wildlife of the Guyanese interior.
