As the Owner or Manager of a Caribbean resort or private island, you are well aware of the difficulty and expense associated with seamlessly providing uninterruptible energy that your guests need to stay comfortable and enjoy their stay. You know your guests will consider energy and water at two times: maybe when making a decision on where to spend their vacation; and absolutely in the event that either of those two essential commodities is not available at the flip of a switch or turning of a faucet.
We recommend a two-pronged approach to our resort and private-island clients: renewable energy generation and energy efficiency. Both of these paths will reduce energy expense, improve reliability and resilience, and earn your resort a reputation as being environmentally friendly without “greenwashing”.
Energy efficiency is very important for the Caribbean. Simply turning off 100 light bulbs during the day can reduce a solar-energy-storage project by many $10’s of thousands of dollars!
We take a similar solar-and-efficiency approach with other market sectors. The main difference with resorts compared to ordinary commercial buildings, for instance, is the occupancy engagement. A commercial building may have the same occupants and occupancy schedule every day of the year. This is compared to a resort that has to manage its seasonal occupancy and energy demands, and also account for the fact that the occupants change from day to day or week to week. Additionally, any energy program cannot impact the quality of the visitor’s experience at your resort. Because of these facts, we usually rely more on automation for resorts than with other market areas.
We have a dedicated team of powerplant experts that will spearhead the transition planning from diesel or bunker fuel to clean solar energy. This team is factory trained and expert in mechanics, controls, automation, and integration of a variety of diesel manufacturers, control systems, and power electronics. This is where the “rubber meets the road”, and we want to make sure you get a reliable system that reduces your maintenance and responsibilities.
We couple this deep expertise with our solar engineering team that has expertise in integrating the package into the aesthetics of the resort – whether you want the solar systems to be completely invisible, or discoverable on a walking tour, or make them a focal point with solar awnings and solar-electric golf carts.
The goals of our resort clients range from reduction of diesel consumption to complete migration to solar and storage. We have achieved great success with a “phased approach” to this challenge, allowing us to minimize cost and risk, achieve economies of scale, and deliver just what is needed and not too much or too little.
Our energy solutions for private islands and resorts include:
- Solar-energy / photovoltaic electricity generation
- Battery storage plants
- Diesel hybrid and microgrids
- Solar-thermal water heating for guest quarters, kitchen, and laundry
- Energy efficiency audits and upgrades
- Multi-year energy capital investment planning
How To Deliver a Private Island Microgrid Project
There is uncertainty and risk at the onset of planning an island microgrid. The key to a successful delivery is to steadily reduce the uncertainty and risk while making small investments in project planning. The cost for moving along this process increases as certainty increases and risk drops.
We start with some desktop estimating. We will work with your management team or design team to define the existing and desired energy performance, prepare a unit-cost estimate, and then calculate the financial performance.
The next step usually is a computer energy model where every hour of every day of the year is simulated to optimize system sizing and energy cost. At the end of that step we prepare another cost and financial performance estimate.
After the energy model, you will decide whether to invest in a partial or full engineering effort. This will be used to further nail down the scope and capital cost of the project.
After engineering is the decision to move to equipment purchasing and construction. At each step we have worked together to increase certainty and de-risk the project. By the time engineering is complete you will know with a high certainty what the total capital investment will be and how the project will perform.
That is real peace of mind – as one of our clients said: “finally we are investing in something that will pay for itself!” (That client owns one of our solar hybrid microgrid projects that has been saving them more than 70% of their energy OpEx since 2020 and will fully pay for itself by 2025.)
You can find an article about that first energy modeling step here .
Please contact us to talk about how to improve your energy and environmental performance with a solar-energy microgrid.
Complete our online financial performance analysis now. Our experts will calculate your energy costs and uses and present you with a detailed look at just how much money you can reasonably expect to save by making the transition to renewable energy.
Complete our online financial performance analysis now. Our experts will calculate your energy costs and uses and present you with a detailed look at just how much money you can reasonably expect to save by making the transition to renewable energy.
