BL&P moves to recover costs

An increase in oil prices is not the only reason Barbadians could face higher electricity bills.

Barbados Light & Power Company Limited (BL&P) has filed two applications with the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) to recover from customers the cost of two areas of expenditure it says are critical to ensuring reliable electricity.

BL&P estimates the electricity bill of the average residential customer would increase by $1.25 a month if one application was approved, and by about $1.26 a month under the second one.

The utility company’s latest bid for cost recovery is expected to be challenged by at least two intervenors in a process which the FTC says will involve two separate written hearings.

Regional financial adviser Ricky Went and attorney Tricia Watson have submitted letters of intervention on the two applications and both indicate that their focus will be ensuring fairness, in particular for rate payers and electricity users.

In November 2025, BL&P submitted its Application For The Recovery Of The Rental And Operating Costs Of 6MW Of Temporary Aggreko Generator Units Through The Fuel Clause Adjustment (FCA) And Approval For The 11MW Aggreko Units, Which Is Set To Expire In May 2026, Be Extended Through To December 2027.

The company said in the filing that “given a scenario where the rental cost of the Aggreko units was approved for recovery through the FCA, the FCA for the month of November 2025, would have been less than half of a cent ($0.004) higher and the impact to the average domestic service (residential) customer consuming 278 kilowatt hours (kWh), would have been a 0.8 per cent ($1.25) increase in the electricity bill.

The second application made in December 2025 is For Preapproval Of Synchronous Condensers (SCOs) Investments And Cost Recovery Through The Clean Energy Transition Rider (CETR).

BL&P estimated the SCOs would have total capital cost of $78.7 million.

“The estimated rate impact of the investments in synchronous condensers is an additional $1.26 per month for a residential customer with a monthly consumption of 250 kWh, compared to current bill,” it said in the application.

BL&P manager of regulatory affairs Adrian Carter said in an affidavit that the company needed surplus generation capacity to ensure that the power grid “can accommodate unexpected fluctuations in demand, scheduled maintenance and the sudden unavailability of generation resources due to forced outages”.

In a separate affidavit on the SCOs application, Carter said SCOs “are essentially large rotating machines that, while not generating active power, provide the same stabilising effects as traditional generators”.

In 2024, the commission directed BL&P to conduct a cost benefit analysis (CBA) to evaluate the practicality of repurposing retired generators as SCOs prior to the approval of estimated costs for new purposed built SCOs.

Carter said the CAB “indicates that repurposing retired generators is not economically or technically feasible”.

BL&P said in the application that the first two SCOs were expected to be commissioned in 2027 and the other two in 2028, in each instance with an estimated capital cost of $39.4 million. The company is requesting an authorised return of $2.93 million in 2027 and 2028.

Went said his prime interest was to seek equity in both matters. On the SCOs, he noted that attention will be given to the key matters raised in the application as well as his team’s submission in relation to BL&P’s previous application to rent 11MW temporary Aggreko generating units.

Went is maintaining that all of the BL&P’s retired and proposed retired generators including steam plant “can be reconfigured to function as SCOs”.

He also believes that there is no need to recover costs for the temporary generators either from the FCA or a new mechanism since this “can be added to the existing assets and the associated costs would simply be depreciated over the remaining lives of the assets”.

Watson will file her detailed grounds of intervention and her information requests in both applications this week.

“As usual, I will ensure that the interests of ratepayers and electricity users, and of consumers generally, are represented in these BL&P applications now to be decided by the FTC,” she said. (SC)

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