Kalain Ho­sein

Nel­son Is­land is now the home of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest in­de­pen­dent, off-grid so­lar sys­tem with its own de­sali­na­tion plant.

With these in­stal­la­tions, the Na­tion­al Trust has now made the is­land a sus­tain­able eco-de­vel­op­ment.

The is­land ran up ex­or­bi­tant costs through diesel and wa­ter ship­ments over the years, run­ning on shipped portable wa­ter and diesel fu­el for a gen­er­a­tor. Af­ter a $390,000 in­vest­ment, Nel­son Is­land can sup­ply pow­er and wa­ter with­out re­liance on the main­land.

The need for pow­er stemmed from the years of restora­tion of the her­itage site, al­low­ing build­ings to be in­hab­it­ed yet again and fa­cil­i­tat­ing tours.

Ac­cord­ing to Ku­mi De Souza, Head of Fa­cil­i­ties at the Na­tion­al Trust, “It is a her­itage site, and it is a fa­cil­i­ty used for tours by the Na­tion­al Trust. We bring like 300 to 400 school chil­dren at times with the wa­ter taxi (pre-COVID-19) and to fa­cil­i­tate that, to fa­cil­i­tate any­thing in 2020, you need elec­tric­i­ty.”

Solar panels on the roof of one of the building at Nelson Island.

Shirley Bahadur

The so­lar pan­el sys­tem will pow­er the is­land’s lights, se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, ap­pli­ances, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, in­clud­ing the new de­sali­na­tion plant.

Nel­son Is­land can now pro­duce 1,000 gal­lons per day, pumped in­to two stor­age ar­eas, with to­tal fresh­wa­ter stor­age of 13,000 gal­lons.

De Souza not­ed that even with re­new­able en­er­gy, they con­tin­ue to try their best to con­serve and pre­serve elec­tri­cal us­age.

“We don’t use every­thing at the same time. Al­though our ca­pac­i­ty might be high, our ac­tu­al us­age is not at full ca­pac­i­ty. We use about 40 per cent of the sys­tem.”

This dri­ve to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eco-de­vel­op­ment is al­so part of the Na­tion­al Trust’s larg­er goal.

A worker inspects the power-supply batteries.

Shirley Bahadur

De Souza ex­plained, “We’re look­ing to have that niche mar­ket in terms of her­itage tourism, but eco-her­itage tourism. So that sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment cre­ates a bet­ter prod­uct, which is what we are about. We are pre­serv­ing our her­itage, pre­serv­ing our his­to­ry but in a sus­tain­able way.”

This eco-her­itage tourism is be­ing guid­ed by the gov­ern­ment’s 2030 ini­tia­tives in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment in their ef­forts to meet the Paris Agree­ment.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty al­so ex­tend­ed to ser­vices pro­vid­ed to the is­land as it comes from with­in the gov­ern­ment. Pris­on­ers from Car­rera Is­land Prison are trans­port­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard to the is­land to per­form all the grounds main­te­nance. Tech­ni­cians, plumbers, en­gi­neers, and con­struc­tion work­ers from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port al­so do the plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal, and build­ing work.

Nelson Island, one of five islands off the North-Western coast of T&T.

Shirley Bahadur