renewables on the T&T Grid

31st July 2026

As someone who has long advocated for more renewable energy in Trinidad & Tobago, the news that the biggest solar project in the English-speaking Caribbean was unable to dispatch electricity to the grid comes as a big disappointment. I have been a cheerleader for the new 90 MW solar plant at Brechin Castle for many years, highlighting both its positive contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and freeing up more natural gas for the struggling downstream industry. 

What has become clear is that T&TEC has faced significant grid management problems with accepting the intermittent electricity on to the grid.  In order to take the intermittent solar from the facility while preserving grid stability they had to increase the spinning reserve from the existing natural fire gas power plants. According to industry sources, the volume of gas required to keep this spinning reserve available from these power stations is surprisingly even more than the savings in gas from the implementation of the solar project.  

While T&TEC previously publicly and repeatedly stated that they could easily absorb the intermittent solar from the project on to the grid, this apparently turned out not to be the case when the electricity actually began to flow.  The T&TEC grid was in the past accustomed to managing big and rapid swings in electricity demand from the steel plant, which closed in 2016, which always gave me confidence that they could deal with the swings associated with solar. However, according to some industry sources there were subsequent changes in the control systems to some of the generation units which were not taken into account in the planning for the arrival of the solar electricity.  Many of the natural gas generation units are old and inefficient, and I understand that has added to the complexity of managing the dispatch of electricity without creating further maintenance issues. 

The immediate solution to this problem is the installation of batteries on the grid to smooth the flow of the electricity from the solar plant onto the grid and enable grid stability without the need for an increased natural gas fired spinning reserve.  T&TEC has already issued expressions of interest for potential battery suppliers.  

Longer-term, however, this problem with the management of the electricity from the first grid scale solar project underlines the importance of integrated planning and grid modernisation when bringing intermittent sources of electricity onto the grid. This is especially the case in Trinidad, where the grid has heavy industrial demand and industrial plants that require very stable electricity. 

Working on behalf of the T&T government and T&TEC, the Inter-American Development Bank has recently gone out to the market to find a specialized consulting firm to develop an Integrated Resource and Resilience Plan (IRRP). According to the procurement noticed the objective is to “establish a coordinated, actionable roadmap combining demand forecasting, resource optimization, and grid modernization over a 10-to-20-year horizon, featuring an immediate near-term action plan for the first 5 years.”  This sounds like a positive step, though one that should have probably been taken a decade ago. 

I also understand that the renewable energy portfolio has been moved from the Ministry of Energy to the Ministry of Public Utilities. I hope that this helps end some of the previous turf wars that existed within the government system and that it will enable better dialogue between the T&TEC technocrats and the public servants with the renewable portfolio. I still worry about dealing with the electricity sector separate and apart from the gas industry, but hopefully this can be addressed through the right Cabinet level strategic thinking. 

One of the factors that the IRRP is going to have to take into account is the fact that there is currently a very long backlog in orders for any new gas turbine.  The boom in AI datacentres, especially in the USA, has put a strain on the turbine manufacturing supply chain and with demand outstripping supply, prices are reported to have more than doubled in the past few years.   This means that solar and wind power’s relative cost have become more attractive compared to natural gas fired power stations. 

Clearly lessons need to be learnt from this experience, but it must not be used to undermine the overall push to increase renewable energy penetration and to reduce the volume of natural gas being used to generate electricity.  This is especially the case when there are customers in Point Lisas who are crying out for that gas and able to pay more than three times the price (and use it to produce foreign exchange generating commodities).