Business View Caribbean | August 2019

47 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN AUGUST 2019 V I RGIN I SLANDS WATER AND POWER AUTHOR I TY Reliable. Affordable. Fast. Water Supply Solutions for the Caribbean and beyond. Efficiency at our generating plants. We developed an integrated resource plan in 2016 that advised upgrading the generation equipment at both our plants to smaller reciprocating engines that use propane as the primary fuel and are more compatible with renewables being on the grid. “We had embarked on that plan before the storms and have just started three reciprocating engines here on St. Thomas that are meeting 50 percent of our current demand. In St. Croix, we just started some leased reciprocating engines in June and about 65 percent of our load is met with that more efficient generation. It’s quite a milestone for us. The third leg of the plan is Greater Renewable Penetration from solar and wind, and including battery storage. Right now in the territory, we have 15 megawatts of residential and commercial net metering rooftop systems, and we have a 4 megawatt utility scale system where WAPA buys power under a public-private alliance agreement. The plan is to put more solar and renewables on the grid with batteries, but funded through HUD Community Development block grants for disaster recovery. Overall, the Virgin Islands has received $1.8 billion in HUD funding. So far, $200 million has been allocated to WAPA for these types of projects and we hope to get additional grant amounts for upgrading.” BVC: What are WAPA’s goals for the future? Kupfer: “Looking forward, WAPA now has an incident command structure with assigned section chiefs with assigned roles to prepare for a storm and respond to damages with whatever restoration is required. We also have a lot of off- island crews on the islands doing mitigation work, such as the composite poles. Their equipment is already here, so if they are evacuated in a storm, they could quickly come back and immediately begin restoration. We now have a better working relationship with APPA and, in the event of a storm, they would be mobilizing their teams shortly thereafter. So we feel we are in a much better place to be prepared and respond for future storms.