The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T says the coun­try is on the verge of a sig­nif­i­cant re­new­able en­er­gy achieve­ment with the up­com­ing com­ple­tion of the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar farm, the largest so­lar project in the re­gion ex­pect­ed to be in op­er­a­tion in five months time.

In a post on its web­site yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said with one-third of the project al­ready com­plet­ed and the re­main­ing work on track for com­ple­tion by the end of 2025, the so­lar farm is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight per cent of this coun­try’s to­tal pow­er-gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

The in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty of 92MW, pro­ject­ed to be op­er­a­tional by Oc­to­ber this year, would pro­vide clean en­er­gy equiv­a­lent to the needs of 31,500 homes.

The cham­ber said the project has pri­ori­tised lo­cal con­tent, em­ploy­ing and train­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 skilled and un­skilled work­ers, many from near­by com­mu­ni­ties, adding that this fo­cus on lo­cal en­gage­ment un­der­scores the so­lar farm’s role in fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic growth along­side re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

Once op­er­a­tional, the cham­ber said the Brechin Cas­tle so­lar farm would stand as the largest project in Grupotec’s glob­al port­fo­lio, which spans Eu­rope, the Amer­i­c­as, Africa and the Caribbean.

Be­yond its en­er­gy con­tri­bu­tions, the so­lar farm is pro­ject­ed to re­duce CO2 emis­sions by 123,000 tonnes an­nu­al­ly—equiv­a­lent to re­mov­ing 26,000 cars from the road—mark­ing a ma­jor step to­ward T&T’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

Con­struc­tion man­ag­er, Grupotec—the en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment, and con­struc­tion con­trac­tor lead­ing the con­struc­tion—Anant Ramkellawan high­light­ed sev­er­al chal­lenges en­coun­tered dur­ing the ini­tial phas­es, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers, dif­fi­cult ter­rain, flood­ing and labour-re­lat­ed is­sues. How­ev­er, the cham­ber said these hur­dles have yield­ed valu­able learn­ings, re­in­forc­ing the project’s role as a pi­o­neer­ing ini­tia­tive in the coun­try’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

“En­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship has been a pri­or­i­ty through­out the project’s ex­e­cu­tion. Com­pli­ance with the cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) en­sured min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to lo­cal ecosys­tems. Mea­sures such as re­lo­cat­ing wildlife (in­clud­ing caimans, bees and ot­ters), us­ing sus­tain­able con­struc­tion tech­niques like pil­ing and re­in­force­ment with ag­gre­gate, and plant­i­ng ve­tiv­er grass for land sta­bil­i­sa­tion demon­strate the project’s com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” the cham­ber ex­plained.

It added the project has achieved an im­pres­sive safe­ty record of 350,000 in­ci­dent-free work hours—a tes­ta­ment to the rig­or­ous stan­dards up­held by the con­struc­tion team.

Lo­cat­ed on 238 hectares of land north­east of Point Lisas, the so­lar farm is a joint ven­ture be­tween BC­SL (Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm Ltd)—a part­ner­ship com­pris­ing BP Al­ter­na­tive En­er­gy T&T, Shell and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.