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As prices fall… BOJ predicts oil price rise in early 2016

November 25, 2015 Webmaster

WEST Texas intermediate benchmark pricing for crude was a low of US$42.63 per barrel yesterday and Wall Street analysts continue to predict a further slump into the new year. But the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is convinced otherwise.

The bank said in its latest quarterly monetary policy report (QMPR) that prices of international commodities, particularly crude oil, are projected to reflect some modest increases, starting in the December 2015 quarter, contributing to an increase in domestic inflation over the near term; a consequence of gradual improvement in global demand conditions as well as a reduction in shale production by the United States of America.

The BOJ indicates that it expects inflation to pick up in both the December 2015 and March 2016 quarters to end fiscal FY2015/16 within the target range of 5.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent, a forecast mainly based on a projected surge in food and oil prices.

Price declines in electricity and fuel resulted in deflation in energy and transport for the September 2015 quarter, largely reflecting the impact of the reduction in crude oil prices.

Headline inflation at the end of the September quarter fell to 1.8 per cent compared to 4.4 per cent at the end of the preceding quarter.

“The reduction largely reflected declines in the cost associated with energy and transport, while agriculture and processed foods prices increased at a slower pace,” the BOJ stated.

However, the BOJ thinks oil price increases will change the trajectory. It is the bank’s assessment that there will be an uptick in the price of crude oil in the last quarter of the fiscal year.

Additionally, year-end inflation will also be affected by prices of domestic agricultural commodities which the bank expects to increase in December due to the recent dry conditions.

Meanwhile, the bank is also predicting that inflation from agricultural commodities will be reduced in the latter part of the December 2015 quarter as drought conditions improve with concurrent price reversals in the March 2016 quarter.

Jamaica Observer

Alternative Energy JPS LNG News Oil

JPS Announces Preferred Bidder For Old Harbour Plant

November 20, 2015 Webmaster

The Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS) has announced the selection of Spanish firm Abengoa as the preferred bidder to build the 190 megawatt Combined Cycle plant in Old Harbor, St Catherine.

The announcement follows the approval by the Electricity Sector Enterprise Team for the company to start negotiations with US-based New Fortress Energy for the supply of natural gas to the plant.

The JPS says once contracted, Abengoa will be responsible for the design, engineering and construction work on the plant.

It will be built close to company’s existing power station in Old Harbour Bay.

The JPS says it is in the process of procuring the necessary permits for the construction of the plant.

It says as part of its public education, it has shared the Environmental Impact Assessment on its website and will host a public consultation meeting next Tuesday in Old Harbour Bay.

The JPS says the gas terminal and the new gas-fired power plant will allow it to retire 220 megawatts of existing oil-fired steam generation units at Old Harbour and Hunts Bay in 2018.

It says this will ultimately result in a reduction of over 1.2 million barrels of oil per year and allow for power generation below 13 United States cents per kilowatt hours.

The Gleaner

Electricity Energy Saving JPS LNG

LNG Suppliers Selected – Power Plant In Operation By 2018

November 13, 2015 Webmaster

Head of the Electricity Sector Enterprise Team (ESET) Dr Vin Lawrence says there was a vast number of credible bids that were put forward for the supply of natural gas to the new power plant to be built by Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS).

New Fortress Energy, the same entity which won the bid to supply gas to the Bogue power plant in Montego Bay, has been selected as the entity to supply LNG to the new plant, on which construction is expected to begin by the second quarter of next year. The arrangement will see New Fortress installing the facilities to receive, store and re-gas the fuel for use at the new 190-megawatt gas-fired plant at Old Harbour.

“Six entities submitted 16 variations of proposals and we were quite delighted at this because we have gone through 15-20 years of attempting to get LNG to Jamaica without much success, and on this RFP, we have had six credible entities submitting 16 variations of supply proposals,” Lawrence said.

The ESET chair, who was addressing a Jamaica House press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister yesterday, also announced that the JPS has selected Spanish firm Abengoa to construct the new plant.

Lawrence said the agreement is for New Fortress Energy to build a terminal and supply the JPS with 200,000 metric tonnes of LNG per annum. New Fortress Energy will build, own and operate the plant which Lawrence said must be expandable.

In Ja’s Best Interest

The company will spend more than $200 million on the terminal, which is expected to be constructed at Rocky Point, Clarendon.

“We have been trying for 20 years to bring natural gas to Jamaica, and so, we believe it is also in our interest that we have a terminal facility that can expand and grow,” he said.

The gas plant is due to be finished by the fourth quarter of 2017 and the power plant is due to be ready at the beginning of 2018.

With Jamalco indicating that it is reviewing its decision on whether it will go ahead with the building of a coal plant or switch its plans to using natural gas, Lawrence said the demand for LNG could be about 500,000 metric tonnes per year.

Schedule Not Affected

Lawrence said the bauxite-producing company is being allowed another two to three weeks to “have discussions with the possible gas supplier for a final decision to be taken”.

“This period will not affect the scheduling that we had proposed for Jamalco. If they shift to gas, we would have a two-year rather than a three-year construction period and the capital cost would be significantly less,” Lawrence added.

The new building of the JPS power plant represents part of an effort to lower electricity costs on the island. The plant will replace 292 megawatts of heavy fuel oil power plant at Old Harbour in St Catherine, and will be combined with energy from renewable sources and cogeneration facilities from Pan-Caribbean Sugar Company and bauxite companies.

The final electricity price to the grid will be less than US$0.13 cents per kWh, the ESET head said, which would mean at least a 30 per cent cut in light bills.

Lawrence said Jamaica has been looking at getting one million metric tonnes per year, and that New Fortress Energy is expected to construct a terminal that can supply the 200,000 metric tonnes that the JPS requires.

He said the demand for LNG from other sources would determine how quickly the facility is expanded.

Technical assistance was provided by the Galway Group and Hatch Mott McDonald, two reputable international firms.

Critical issues such as the security of supply, capability of delivering the project, ability to expand the terminal, ability to meet the power plant schedule, and a commitment to achieve a timely financial close were considered in selecting New Fortress Energy as the preferred bidder.

The Gleaner

Electricity JPS News

Peferred Bidders Identified For 190-Megawatt Power Plant

October 26, 2015 Webmaster

IT APPEARS that the Electricity Sector Enterprise Team (ESET) has identified a preferred bidder for the supply of gas to a 190-megawatt plant, which the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) is to build by the fourth quarter of 2017.

A member of the Portia Simpson Miller-chaired Cabinet said on Friday that the amendments being made to the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR) Act was part of a move to ensure Jamaica is able to attract significant investment capital.

“Jamaica has found it difficult to attract investment in the baseload capacity over many years,” Mark Golding said in the Senate.

He noted that with Jamaica becoming the first non-North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) country to benefit from the grant of a licence for the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, consideration is now being given to establish a gas hub in the country.

“It has given us a strategic advantage in establishing this regional hub, and we have gone through a process of seeking investor interest. We have had significant investor interest for the establishment of the gas terminal to supply gas to the new 190-megawatt plant that JPS will be building and also to possibly provide gas from that terminal to other users in the country and, indeed, in the region. I believe a preferred bidder has been identified,” Golding said.

He lamented the fact that despite many attempts to get LNG to Jamaica, the country has been unable to do so mainly because of uncertainty about regulation of the electricity sector.

Yesterday, Phillip Paulwell, the country’s energy minister, said an announcement is to be made shortly by ESET about the selection of two bidders – one to construct the new generation plant and the other to build the infrastructure and deliver LNG to the facility.

“It is fundamentally part of the diversification that is taking place. The price of electricity has gone down by 30 per cent already, but what we want to achieve is diversification, and we would never get back to the state where when the price of crude oil goes up, we are affected by severely high prices,” Paulwell said.

Meanwhile, Golding said in the Senate that the amended OUR Act will lead to improved investor interest. He argued that it would benefit Jamaica “by ensuring that our baseload capacity can be transformed and that we can get the investments needed”.

According to the Cabinet minister, investment in providing baseload energy requires significant spending, and investors are “not prepared to invest in this market where their pricing is set in a totally arbitrary manner by persons who are not accountable to anyone”.

Undermining Regulator’s Independence

Among the amendments set out in the new OUR bill, which has now been passed by both Houses of Parliament, are for the OUR to use certain factors in determining the rates to be paid to a utility company for the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. Those factors include observing policy directions of the Cabinet and examining the licence of the utility provider, specifically as it relates to determining the appropriate rate of return for investment.

But opposition senators opposed the amendment, saying it was guaranteeing profit to investors and that it would undermine the independence of the regulator.

“The OUR will no longer be able to call itself independent,” Kamina Johnson Smith said, as she raised concerns about a possible overreach of the executive.

“We will no longer be able to truthfully state, as a fact, that we can boast of having an independent regulator,” she added.

“It is anti-transparency, anti-investor and anti-people of Jamaica,” Johnson Smith charged.

But Golding said she has misunderstood the intent of the bill and said further that getting cheaper energy for Jamaica hinges, in part, on the provisions in the bill. He argued also that Cabinet has a most important role in the process and thus it “cannot totally drop its hands in the face of a dysfunctional regulatory system that is denying the country effective” solutions to lower energy prices.

“We cannot divest, in the name of independence, to unaccountable bureaucrats, the ability to stymie investment through either their own incompetence or whatever may be the problem. We have suffered under that system,” Golding added.

The Gleaner

Electricity JPS News

Monymusk, Frome Ready To Provide Electricity But…

October 8, 2015 Webmaster

While the Pan Caribbean Sugar Company (PCSC)-owned Monymusk and Frome sugar factories are now ready to supply electricity to the national power grid, their delivery of the service is being held back by procedural matters, including the need for an operational licence.

“We have made some progress, but we still have some way to go in our discussions with the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) and the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) regarding a licence and a power-purchase agreement,” Delroy Armstrong, a senior assistant to the CEO of the PCSC, told The Gleaner yesterday.

While the Government has been quite vocal in stating a desire to see more private suppliers start selling electricity to the national grid, it would appear the PCSC, which is a subsidiary of the Chinese COMPLANT group, has been in a state of readiness for quite some time.

“I cannot give you the numbers right now, but we have realised significant savings from this investment. It has allowed us to become self-sufficient to the point that we have excess energy that we are now offering to sell to the national grid,” said Armstrong, in explaining the situation at Monymusk and Frome.

However, despite the state of readiness of the two factories, Armstrong was not able to say how soon they will begin to supply electricity to the national grid. In fact, he thinks it might not be anytime soon.

“If we get permission and come to an agreement with JPS, there will be other infrastructure that we will have to put in place, so it is not safe for me to give you a timeline for this to be a reality,” said Armstrong.

As part of its drive towards efficiency, the PCSC installed new 75-ton boilers at its Monymusk and Frome facilities. It has also installed two generators that produce 10 and five megawatts, respectively, at each location.

The energy being produced by the factories comes from bagasse, which is the fibrous matter that remains after sugar cane is crushed to extract juice, and is considered to be a biofuel. It is also frequently used as a primary fuel source for sugar mills. When burnt in quantity, it produces sufficient heat energy to supply all the needs of a typical sugar mill, with energy to spare.

The PCSC has been pushing for at least five per cent of off-season bagasse-based energy to be passed on to the national grid and projects that, making use of the process after the sugar season, the 10-megawatt generator could be used to develop bagasse into fuel within the next three years.

Alternative Energy Electricity JPS Solar Energy

Wisynco To Commission Solar Farm

September 23, 2015 Webmaster

Wisynco Group is to commission its one-megawatt solar energy system on Thursday.

The facility was developed on five acres of land adjoining the company’s warehouse and distribution outlet in Spanish Town, St Catherine, said chairman William Mahfood.

A quarter of the solar panels are mounted on the roof of the distribution building, while some are deployed on the ground,” said Mahfood.

The $200 million project is to be done in two phases, he said, the second of which will quadruple the capacity of the current system.

“It will basically allow us to supplement the energy that we now get from Jamaica Public Service, to lower our energy cost, as well as become more environmentally friendly using a sustainable type of energy,” the beverage maker said.

The company touts the facility as the first solar to high-voltage application and the largest solar farm in Jamaica.

The Gleaner

Alternative Energy Electricity Government News

More Renewable Energy For Grid

August 26, 2015 Webmaster

Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell said yesterday that he expects renewable energy to comprise 12.5 per cent of the national grid by the end of 2016.

The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has invited interested entities to submit proposals for the provision of new generating capacity from renewable energy sources up to 37 megawatts (MW) to the national grid.

Currently, six per cent of the national grid is supplied by renewables, and this is to increase with the addition of 78MW by March next year with the coming on stream of three new renewable projects.

The National Energy Policy has identified fuel diversification and the development of the country’s renewable energy sources as two of its main objectives. The policy sets a target of having 20 per cent of the country’s energy being generated from renewables by 2030.

“My own view now is that we should aim for 30 per cent. The 12.5 will be achieved next year and we will be the leading Caribbean country in terms of renewables,” Paulwell said.

SYSTEM CAPACITY

Light and power provider, the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), supplies consumers from an installed system capacity of approximately 945.1MW.

To date, the highest peak demand registered on the system was 644.4MW. In 2014, annual generation from renewable energy sources accounted for approximately six per cent of total system generation, with contributions of 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent from hydro and wind, respectively.

Meanwhile, Paulwell revealed that the net-billing arrangement is to be recommenced next month. The programme was suspended to undertake a review of the performance of the system and Paulwell said “all indications are that it has been doing very well and we, therefore, are going to resume”.

Net-billing is the system whereby the JPS buys excess power from its customers.

LICENCES ISSUED

More than 300 net billing licences have so far been issued by the energy minister, and the suspension of the system was undertaken to evaluate its success.

“We have not achieved the original target to get to 4MW of electricity being generated by that means and also we have not seen any degradation of the grid as a result,” Paulwell said.

But while the Government gets set to resume the net-billing arrangements, JPS has said that the regulatory authorities must institute a special cost system for persons who generate most of their own energy through renewable energy but are still dependent on the grid.

“If you come on for one hour, I have to do the same exact generation that I have to do if you are on for one day,” Kelly Tomblin, JPS president and CEO, told The Gleaner.

But Paulwell, responding to that charge, said “that is an argument that the OUR will have to address. Our policy is to encourage more and more renewables at the individual level.”

The Gleaner

Electricity JPS News

JPS To Invest Up To US$40m In Smart Grid

August 21, 2015 Webmaster

Jamaica’s light and power company is spending up to US$40 million over five years to roll out a smart grid and cut line losses.

Last year, the Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS) reported a one per cent decline in sales along with a one per cent increase in system losses – mostly electricity theft – which drained US$18.4 million in revenue from the company.

Now, Senior Vice-President, Energy Delivery, Technology and Innovation Gary Barrow says the company is spending US$6 million to US$8 million per year over a span of five years on technology upgrades.

That includes the installation of smart meters, which the company has been testing in select homes since at least 2012 under what was referred to as its Smart Grid Interface pilot, according to past reports.

Now, around one-tenth of customers have smart meters installed.

The last 24 months have seen the light and power company quietly acquiring and testing new equipment, pilot-testing new programmes, and doing “systems shakedowns” before large-scale rollouts, said Barrow.

Pivotal to this will be the implementation of the smart grid. This is already giving the company the ability to remotely fix power outages, reroute power, monitor usage, and to start tackling losses that gobble up as much as 26 per cent of the power it generates.

Barrow is downplaying the smart grid as a silver bullet, meaning it will not solve all the problems that drain revenue from the utility, but he said it would put JPS on the cutting edge of technology and within requirements of a modern electricity distribution system

“When you talk about a smart grid, it is really about putting more intelligence into the grid. It is where you start and where you end. That is how the technology is evolving. It is getting the data and using a lot of sophisticated analytical tools that translate that data into information for us,” Barrow said.

The system has distribution automation switches that allow JPS to pinpoint faults and reroute power. Coupled with that is an outage management system that automatically locates outages and manages real-time recovery. The centrepiece of the improvements, however, is the installation of smart meters.

Over the last two years, the light and power company has installed about 60,000 smart meters, which is just about 10 per cent of the 580,000 customers served by JPS.

Consumption Readings

Barrow notes, however, that 65 per cent of revenue comes from customers with smart meters. This is because 100 per cent of all large customers – numbering about 5,000 business – are on smart meters. In addition, they have sought to cover medium-sized businesses and other heavy users.

The commercial applications – commercial automated metering infrastructure, or CAMI – allow JPS to do readings of consumption at 15-minute intervals for all large commercial customers. This information is shared with clients.

JPS also uses MV90 software to analyse if there are any unusual consumption patterns.

The company has also tested and is installing meters on a secondary line of distribution transformers. On a practical level, what that means is that JPS attaches a meter to one leg of the average 220 voltage wires that feed a typical street. This allows JPS to get closer to its goal of reducing line losses.

Barrow says that when the system is fully rolled out, JPS will be able to pinpoint energy theft at the micro level.

“Before, we knew that an entire feeder was suffering from theft, but now, we are actually able to take it down to transformer level. So if only 25 customers are on that transformer and we know that … we are delivering more energy than what we have billed for, now we can pin-point with great granularity where the theft is happening,” the power executive said.

He says JPS is also totting up savings from the smart grid.

“In some areas where we had as much as 50 per cent theft of electricity, just putting in these meters and taking some other actions, we were able to bring that down to two to three per cent,” he told Wednesday Business.

Given those successes, JPS is preparing to go a step further, technologically speaking, with the planned roll-out of “Smarter Smart Meters”, which will allow customers to manage their energy consumption through remote control of the devices in their own homes.

That system is in the final stages of pilot-testing in the upscale Jacks Hill-Norbrook areas of Kingston.

Having committed to the smart grid investment, the monopoly power distributor appears wary of competition from renewable energy systems – possibly under net-metering/net-billing policies that allow persons to generate and sell electricity to the national grid – with Barrow noting the proliferation of photovoltaics, which harness solar energy.

He said what was required is a modernisation of regulations.

“This is a critical success factor or a critical point of failure. I can be talking about all of these things, and if the regulations don’t support it in a way that the business remains viable, then as a country, we will lose out,” he said.

The Gleaner

Alternative Energy Electricity JPS News

Solar Lights Up Red Bank Business

August 16, 2015 Webmaster

The lush green Malvern hills in the distance is in stark contrast to parched lands at Red Bank, St Elizabeth. Almost everywhere, farmers are busy pouring water on their plants, which are, for the most part, fighting an uphill battle against a wicked drought that threatens to bring everyone to their knees.

At Red Bank, there is no piped water, the catchments are dry, and the sun stands overhead like a wicked overseer. But it is not all bad. One man, Denroy Evans, has, for the past year, plugged into the element and is using solar power to drive his businesses.

Evans told The Gleaner that high electricity costs had threatened the survival of his business.

“One day I went to pay my bill and the lady looked at me and said, ‘Mr Evans, wait, a weh yu a burn up deh suh?'” Evans recalled.

He had gone to a bill payment agency in Junction, five miles from Red Bank, to pay a Jamaica Public Service (JPS) bill of $100,000.

“That is when I started to think. I said to myself, ‘If I could save that $100,000 per month, it would be $1.2 millon per year. So why not muscle up and put in the system and save it?'” Evan said.

Invested $4 Million

That was just over two years ago. Since then, he has invested roughly $4 million in a solar lighting system, and hardly has to deal with the JPS.

“With the high cost of energy, you have to find alternative sources. With the introduction of the solar system, we are now paying, depending on the time of the year, $6,000 to $12,000 per month. We have saved 85 to 90 per cent by installing solar, [the cost of] which will be recovered in about three to four years,” Evans told The Gleaner.

The system, which has been mounted on the top of a building that serves as home for a farm store, a supermarket and a variety store, consists of 63 solar panels, 56 batteries, a 6,000 watt inverter, and three controllers for the charging system. It runs some 10 refrigerators, lights, computers, cameras and fans.

“On the average, I pull down about 80-kilowatt (kw) hours per day and use about 75kw hours daily. We get good weather. We don’t get any rain and the sun is always out,” Evans quipped.

He said that the use of renewable energy is definitely the way to go, but cautions that anybody who wishes to invest should first of all educate himself/herself about the system.

“I have seen many people install it and they don’t even go into the battery room to check anything. What results is that the battery runs out of water … you need to be integrally involved in your solar system,” said Evans, who is a trained farmer and one-time teacher.

Light and power company JPS said that it is in favour of Jamaicans maximising the potential of solar and other renewable power. The company said, however, that the regulatory authorities must pay attention to the fact that the cost of operating the national grid is not dependent on the number of users.

“If you come on for one hour, I have to do the same exact generation that I have to do if you are on for one day,” Kelly Tomblin, JPS president and CEO told The Gleaner.

“If you have solar and you come on my system for 10 minutes, I have to build the same amount of infrastructure. If you are going to go solar, go completely solar, or if you are coming on my system, price it so that it reflects the fact that I have to build an exact same power plant and exact same infrastructure,” Tomblin added.

The Gleaner

Alternative Energy Electricity JPS News

JPS Moves Closer To Cheaper Electricity

August 10, 2015 Webmaster

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has signed an agreement for the long-awaited supply of gas to the island.

The company has announced that it has signed a deal with the United States (US)-based New Fortress Energy for the supply of gas to Jamaica, after receiving approvals from the Government and the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).

Under the agreement, New Fortress Energy will provide the JPS with liquefied natural gas (LNG) for its 120-megawatt power plant in Bogue, St James.

The plant, which was first commissioned into service in 2003, is being converted to run on gas instead of the more expensive automotive diesel oil.

“This is a historic moment for JPS and for Jamaica,” said Kelly Tomblin, president and CEO of the JPS.

“JPS has worked since 2012 to procure gas as part our fuel diversification strategy. We are fortunate that we can now take advantage of technology related to gas shipments and supportive US policies that allow the export of gas to non-FTA countries.

“Just today (Friday), Fortress received its permit from the US Government to export gas to Jamaica. JPS is honoured to be leading this game-changer for the energy sector,” said Tomblin.

Support National Goals

The JPS CEO said the introduction of gas will support the national goals of energy security, sustainability and affordability.

“The move to cleaner fuels and more flexible generation will reduce our environmental footprint by allowing Jamaica to optimise our use of renewables while we simultaneously reduce emissions from our baseload generation,” said Tomblin.

According to Tomblin, the JPS has been working closely with the Electricity Sector Enterprise Team, which was set up by the Government to oversee the upgrade and expansion of Jamaica’s energy sector.

The signing of the gas supply agreement has set the stage for work to begin on the infrastructure needed for the delivery of gas to Bogue by early 2016.

Wes Edens, founder and co-chairman of the board of Fortress Investment Group, declared New Fortress Energy’s commitment to investing and creating value in Jamaica.

“This agreement opens the door to a new era of energy diversity and independence for Jamaica and its citizens, enabling the region to benefit from cost-effective, stable supplies of US natural gas.

“Our vision extends far beyond Bogue. This will be the catalyst to establish Jamaica as an energy hub for the Caribbean and Latin America. Jamaica is the ideal location to execute on this vision, and we intend to invest significantly in energy, port and logistics infrastructure on the island. Change takes vision and we applaud JPS, its leadership, and the Government of Jamaica for working tirelessly towards this moment.”

The Gleaner

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