St Kitts and Nevis commissions 6MW rental power plant to stabilize grid amid major infrastructure upgrades

St Kitts and Nevis: The Ministry of Energy under the leadership of Konris Maynard on Friday officially commissioned the 6 megawatt (MW) rental power plant from Aggreko, a global energy solutions provider at the SKELEC power plant.

This new plant strives to provide temporary stability to the national grid while SKELEC undertakes important infrastructure upgrades to secure a sustainable and reliable energy supply.

While speaking at the commissioning ceremony, Minister Maynard said that as his team is working toward that new 18 megawatt plant and the urgent need to service and overhaul the generators that have been overrun and are just on the verge of collapse and the vulnerability of the aged generators, it is necessary to execute a reliable temporary solution of supply so that SKELEC can successfully achieve its goals.

According to the information, the government of St Kitts and Nevis has secured a total of USD $40 million in concessional funding from the Saudi Fund for Development in order to support the construction, procurement and operation of an 18MW dual fuel power plant which will be paired with a battery energy storage system.

Minister Maynard noted that this new plant will not only provide a more reliable future but will also provide a bridge towards achieving the Sustainable Island State Agenda by pairing a clean burning flexible generation platform with the one having energy storage technology designed to ease the proliferation of distributed renewable energy resources that are to be incentivized via the rool out of a feed in tariff.

This temporary 6MW rental power agreement with Aggreko will span around 12 months initially and will allow SKELEC to perform important overhauls on its fixed generator fleet. This will include necessary maintenance on the 25 year old Mirrlees Blackstone MB430 6MW generator which is the largest single generator in St Kitts and Nevis and is operation beyond its intended capacity.