A Trinidad player enables energy self-sufficiency

Trinidad and Tobago

Shamir Khan, operations director of the Renewable Energy Supplies and Services Company of Trinidad and Tobago (RESSCOTT Limited), talks to The Energy Year about how the company’s services can save energy costs for clients. RESSCOTT Limited is a renewables and energy efficiency engineering company serving the residential, commercial, oil and gas, agricultural and industrial sectors.

What response did RESSCOTT Limited receive from financiers over the course of 2023?
Based on our engineering skills and execution, we have received more interest from financiers who see the benefit of financing renewable energy in Trinidad. Although Trinidad and Tobago has a low energy cost compared to many other countries, our company is still able to reduce that by 50-80%, guaranteed. Our country uses approximately 20 times more power than the other Caribbean islands, so our financiers see this as a valuable investment if we can reduce those costs by a minimum of 50%. Their investment allows us to execute more projects, which benefits them as well.
Over the last year, we received an exponential increase in interested clients, having gathered approximately USD 100 million of investment. This mainly applies to our Solar Powered City Project, where most of our clients are working with our leasing option.

Besides energy, how have you implemented your services to the benefit of other sectors?
One way we’ve used the financing we received was to improve the energy distribution to hotels and beach houses in Trinidad and Tobago by implementing solar PV systems to heat their pools and power special loads. Not only does this have the obvious benefit of reducing their utility costs, but additionally, the upgrade of their facility and the idea of renewable energy is attractive to many tourists, so this becomes a selling point for these businesses.
The more projects done like this, the more interest we receive from foreign investors. This now helps us to generate USD currency, which is a positive impact for Trinidad and Tobago as well.

Would more solar energy installations positively or negatively impact a government’s revenue?
It’s important to clarify that solar developments don’t take away from the government revenue generated by local utility companies. In fact, these developments help to expand business opportunities. Solar technologies are only going to continue to advance, and investing in them can help to expand opportunities in the market.
For example, if a business, factory or processing plant is located in an area where there are not yet utilities available, they can invest in our solar power systems to carry out their operations; this way, the client begins to generate revenue without delays. They can then use that revenue to finance the utilities which they need from the government at a later date.

To what extent can RESSCOTT Limited’s services help larger, commercial buildings save costs?
Solar power systems alone won’t save you significant amounts of money, but solar power systems and some engineering will. We have worked with supermarkets and other commercial buildings, installing systems which have helped them to save significantly. For example, one medium-sized grocery store that we worked with has gone from paying an electricity bill averaging TTD 37,000 [USD 5,350] per month to one averaging TTD 5,700 [USD 838] per month.
When we launch this system on the wider market, we expect that it will have a huge impact on the energy landscape. Our systems allow companies to generate and own their electrical power so that they don’t have to risk becoming buried in debt.

Beside Trinidad and Tobago, what other Caribbean territories are you executing key projects in?
We have now started operating in Jamaica on a large scale. Jamaica is a larger island where the power supply does not fully meet the demand, which has left the country unable to develop in some areas. There are housing developments in some areas that have problems receiving a steady power and water supply.
We have solar-powered water treatment and desalination plants that can help these areas to secure a clean and safe water supply. We first need to get the approval from their government to move forward with this type of project. We intend to target the entire Caribbean but we’re still building other partnerships and looking at how we can integrate our services in the other islands.

How can RESSCOTT Limited provide beneficial solutions to the downstream sector as facilities undergo upgrades?
In the downstream sector, the power plants themselves operate efficiently, but there is still room to improve regarding the facility operations – like lighting, camera monitoring and other larger solar PV plants. A key example would be parking lots which are lit by generators.
Our products and services are very useful for bringing power to these facilities and we aim to make this affordable and sensible for the client. Solar power systems can be very expensive but we can help the client see the value of the investment by deploying systems that save on construction costs.
For example, perimeter lighting on the plants is usually very limited due to construction cost and infrastructure, but we can design centralised stations on the fence line and start distributing power for them. Doing that is significantly cheaper than excavating, and erecting poles, transformers and power lines to run power from a plant which may be far away – especially through hazardous areas.
In addition, we provide a renewable energy service for the oil and gas sector, whereby we can help to make them more efficient and sustainable by saving large sums of money, and upgrading the plants to conduct their business using a more carbon-neutral method – this is indeed the future.

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