• The population and infrastructure growth of the Cayman Islands demands more electricity. When thinking about our power grid and future energy needs, it is critical that we plan for where that energy will come from.

  • The Government’s National Energy Policy goal is for the country to derive 70% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2037. Read on to learn more about renewable energy, its different sources and its advantages and challenges.

  • The population and infrastructure growth of the Cayman Islands demands more electricity. When thinking about our power grid and future energy needs, it is critical that we plan for where that energy will come from.

  • The Government’s National Energy Policy goal is for the country to derive 70% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2037. Read on to learn more about renewable energy, its different sources and its advantages and challenges.

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy is derived from natural sources such as sunlight and wind, which are replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed. Thus, they cannot be depleted from the earth when used.

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy is derived from natural sources such as sunlight and wind, which are replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed. Thus, they cannot be depleted from the earth when used.

How is renewable energy different from

non-renewable energy?

Fossil fuels, such as coal and diesel are non-renewable resources that take hundreds of millions of years to form within the earth. Fossil fuels are burned to produce energy. However, this process creates harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

How is renewable energy different from non-renewable energy?

Fossil fuels, such as coal and diesel are non-renewable resources that take hundreds of millions of years to form within the earth. Fossil fuels are burned to produce energy. However, this process creates harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Hydropower Plants

Generating electricity from renewable energy creates far fewer emissions than burning fossil fuels. Transitioning from fossil fuels, which currently account for the majority of global emissions, to renewable energy is key to addressing the climate crisis.

Hydropower Plants

While we currently rely upon non-renewable sources for a majority of our energy production, we make every effort to reduce air emissions at our plant.

Wind Turbines

Our commitment to the environment is reflected in our Environmental Management System (EMS), designed to meet the International Standardization Organization (ISO) 14001 requirements.

Wind Turbines

CUC was first registered to the ISO 14001 standard in 2004, the first and only organisation in the Cayman Islands to achieve this third-party registration. We sought to abide by international standards without any legal requirements to do so.

Wind Turbines

We hold ourselves to the highest standards and we willingly submit to external audits to ensure our compliance.

Why isn’t renewable energy everywhere now? Why isn’t it our major source of energy?

Renewable energy options for Grand Cayman are limited by the nature of our land.

For example, hydropower typically requires rivers and wind energy requires a large footprint. But sunshine? We have that in droves!

Below are the three major challenges utility companies have faced during the adoption of large scale solar and the solutions to these challenges, that CUC is already in the process of implementing.

Cost

When solar electricity was first introduced the cost was very high, as those costs decreased usage of solar increased.  But there was still one limiting factor – the storage of electricity to be provided during renewable energy down times.

Consistent Supply

Solar energy is only produced during the day and only at peak performance on sunny days. This is why we call it Non-Firm Power. Non-firm power lacks a guarantee of continuous electricity availability under all conditions. When the weather changes quickly due to something simple like clouds passing by, solar panels are no longer able to supply the same amount of electricity. During this time our engines have to provide the electricity to the country and engines of these sizes do not turn on as quickly as a cloud moves in.

What does that mean? There are two options:

1. Outages for the country as the solar supply decreases and the engines are slowly turned on to meet that need, or

2. Keep spare engines running to provide the electricity that was moments before being provided by solar. This is called spinning reserve (engines running to provide backup power in the event of loss of generation).

Most utility companies, including CUC, utilise option 2. Utility companies with diesel generation have spinning reserve at all times to handle the ups and downs of electricity demand, but when the amount of solar on the grid increases, the amount of spinning reserve (and diesel used) also has to increase. This results in consumers having to pay for solar and diesel generation. Batteries, the solution to this problem, are finally becoming an affordable option.

In an effort to minimise the impact of solar generation fluctuations on consumers in Grand Cayman, CUC has worked in conjunction with the regulator to carefully balance the amount of solar allowed on the grid with the resulting spinning reserve requirements. In order to increase the opportunity for additional solar on the grid with minimal cost impact to customers and minimal outages, CUC has now launched our battery storage project, which will increase fuel efficiency and allow more distributed renewables on the grid.

Storage

Due to the intermittent nature of renewables, energy storage is needed to capture and release electricity in a consistent and controlled way to the grid.

Batteries can store the energy produced by solar panels and allow CUC to reduce the spinning reserve. This reduces costs for consumers; less fuel will be used and consumers are only paying for one source of energy.

The installation of the batteries increases the amount of solar the grid can accommodate, and will prevent outages by balancing production and demand.

Learn more about our battery project here.

Watch the video below from ‘DW Planet A’ a German international broadcaster to learn more about the journey of solar energy