MORE and more Jamaicans have been making the switch from oil-powered sources to solar energy in recent times, but a technocrat in the Climate Change Division of the environment ministry revealed yesterday that energy generated from wind, biomass and hydro sources outrank that which comes from the sun.

The preference for solar among the general population, he reasoned, had to do with the fact that it doesn’t require the type of longterm studies that wind, hydro and biomass do; so where solar loses in terms of cost, it wins in terms of ease of set-up and installation.

“People do go towards solar a lot because it’s famous.

It’s been around for a while [and] it’s very easy to deploys [but] solar might not be the first place Jamaicans should look,” technical officer in the division Gerald Lindo told Jamaica Observer journalists during yesterday’s Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue head office in Kingston.

He based his conclusion on the results of tender documents submitted to the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) bidding to supply some 115 megawatts of electricity to the grid.

Of a total 20 bids received in 2013, Blue Mountain Renewables LLC, Wigton Windfarm Limited and WRB Enterprises Inc were chosen as preferred bidders.

Blue Mountain and Wigton were to supply 34 and 24 megawatts of wind, respectively, while WRB was to provide 20 megawatts using solar PV.

“If you look at the results of the last renewable energy tender, for instance, or at the bidding documents the OUR prepared, or some of the studies that the Ministry of Energy did, you’d see that solar is the most expensive renewable form of energy that we have available in Jamaica today.

It’s beaten by biomass, it’s beaten by waste-to-energy, it’s beaten by hydro, certainly, and it’s beaten by wind,” Lindo said.

“The results of the last one showed that the two cheapest ones were two wind plants (which will cost) close to 13 or 14 cents. The solar plant, the third-placed measure, was somewhere around 17 or 18 cents,” he added.

The high cost relative to wind and hydro-electricity notwithstanding, Lindo said there is a place for solar in the island’s renewable energy mix.

“If we’re getting to the 20 per cent target that the Ministry of Energy has set, then even after you exhaust the cheaper forms of renewable energy you will need solar to make up that 20 or 30 per cent.

So solar will have a role [and] it is good that the price continues to drop,” he said.

Also yesterday, Lindo and his colleague technocrats — Albert Daley, head of the Climate Change Division; Dr Orville Grey, technical officer in the division; and Jeffrey Spooner, head of the Meteorological Services of Jamaica’s Climate Branch agreed that Government’s planned 360 MW fossil fuel plant was a good idea.

Asked if the move was in line with the country’s stated objective of cutting carbon emissions to mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change, Lindo referenced the age and inefficiency of existing plants and the risk they pose to carbon pollution and human health.

“The things that we’ve had in place, beyond the fact that they are way past their sell by dates, so to speak, they burn heavy fuel oil, which ranks high in terms of emissions; not just emissions with global warming potential, but emissions which harm human health… so if we replace what we have with what is planned, it will reduce Jamaica’s emissions by quite a bit.

It will reduce cost as well,” he said.