EDITOR’S NOTE: Approaching the end of April, #infrastruCaribe featured energy infrastructure in the Caribbean, in continuation of our series on utilities, in edition 2021-04-27. We do the same in this newsletter. Five Caribbean countries are covered. Three of our five articles are on Guyana: one it shares with French Guiana and Suriname. The Dominican Republic and Haiti each have a single article. And, information on additional Caribbean countries may be found in our Twitter feed.
Our headline, taken from News Room Guyana, reads: “Gov’t Discussing Regional Energy Corridor with Suriname, Brazil, French Guiana”. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) had conducted baseline and pre-feasibility studies in 2016 and 2017. And, recent discoveries of oil/gas reserves with significant potential in Guyana and Suriname, has renewed interest in the proposed corridor to Northern Brazil and French Guiana, previously called the ‘Arco Norte Electrical Interconnection.’.
Guyana is also planning the installation of 300 megawatts of generating capacity using Natural Gas from the Stabroek Block. But, the design has not yet been finalized. Nevertheless, a 46.5-megawatt power plant has been constructed by Wärtsilä, at the Guyana Power and Light Garden of Eden Power Station. This is scheduled to be testing this month and will be fully commissioned a few months later.
Meanwhile, Haiti is testing a 60-megawatt Carrefour III power plant on its metropolitan network. When fully operational the plant is expected to supply power for an average of 15 – 18 hours per day, with available fuel. Finally in the Dominican Republic, about 61 companies have expressed an interest in tendering on the construction of two power plants in Manzanillo, Montecristi province, which will add 800 megawatts to their national grid.