T&T’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm, Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Lim­it­ed, has achieved first elec­trons, bp an­nounced in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day.

The so­lar farm, a joint ven­ture part­ner­ship be­tween bp, Shell and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), has suc­cess­ful­ly been de­liv­ered to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion sub-sta­tion at Brechin Cas­tle.

As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny said it had be­gun pro­vid­ing clean­er en­er­gy in­to the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty net­work.

The re­lease said, “On Thurs­day, Ju­ly 17, first elec­trons were trans­mit­ted from the south­ern seg­ment of the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar farm, which will be grad­u­al­ly ramped up to de­liv­er up to ~40 megawatts (ac) of pow­er to T&TEC. Work will con­tin­ue to­ward achiev­ing me­chan­i­cal com­ple­tion on the north­ern seg­ment be­fore ful­ly com­mis­sion­ing the site in 4Q 2025.”

The re­lease added, “Once ful­ly com­mis­sioned, the so­lar farm will have the ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er up to 92 megawatts (ac) of pow­er in­to the na­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty grid. This makes it the largest util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm in the Caribbean. It will pro­vide ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8% of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pow­er gen­er­a­tion, al­low­ing nat­ur­al gas to be redi­rect­ed to oth­er down­stream users.”

This means that po­ten­tial­ly more for­eign ex­change could be gen­er­at­ed from the sale of the nat­ur­al gas from this coun­try.

The re­lease end­ed, “This achieve­ment un­der­scores the com­mit­ment of bp, Shell and NGC to di­ver­si­fy­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy mix, re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions while sup­port­ing the en­er­gy needs of the coun­try.”