A Belgian company has energy solutions for rural, low-income communities

Oct 21, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

The government, in partnership with the IsDB, recently placed an advert in the paper for hydropower design and construction services. Upon seeing this, I started to reel.
In my letter to the Editor titled “Will Guyana take advantage of these remarkable victories in sustainable energy generation?” KN News August 2, I presented the current view of renewable energy implementation in the context of a traditional power grid.
Power coming from solar panels will be mediated by software systems, being buffered at first into batteries at home. These home systems use the internet to signal the transfer of power across the network, sharing power among homes when panel production exceeds consumption and battery storage. Together, and at given moments, all the homes in a battery networked neighbourhood may produce more power than they consume. This ‘overflow’ of power would then be transferred to nearby consumers – like dense, more vertically constructed population centres that lack for rooftop space or industrial estates; or in the case of Australia, entire city centres.
Homeowners may even earn money by generating power for the grid. At the utility scale, software will allow wind, solar, fuel and other sources to cooperate in an intelligent manner. Wärtsilä tested such a software system in an undisclosed location. In this test, fossil fuel generator usage was reduced by 80%. They used the same dual-fuel engine deployed here in Guyana. For the sake of convenience, I provided the information sources for these developments in an enclosed note to the Editor.
In that same letter, I briefly mentioned turbulent turbines. I feel urged to suggest that this solution might be ideal for rural communities in need of hydropower solutions. Turbulent is a company based in Belgium with experience in delivering hydropower implementations in the region, more specifically, to rural communities in low-income countries. They recently deployed one of their turbines in neighbouring Suriname. The turbulent turbine does not block waterways. Turbines can be instantiated almost indefinitely along the sides of streams, meaning you can add more and more turbines over the long term, to the same stream. These ‘top-down’ turbines are a demonstrated solution that protects wildlife, does not adversely affect the flow of an attached stream and can be scaled to meet any power requirement, large or small.
Here is a link to a very friendly page on their website where organisations can submit details about
proposed hydropower projects https://www.turbulent.be/for-whom.
If the government is already on to this, then colour me excited.

Sincerely,
Emille Gidding

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News