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Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has con­firmed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is not us­ing elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by the coun­try’s largest so­lar farm, Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Ltd, leav­ing pow­er be­ing pro­duced but not de­liv­ered to the na­tion­al grid.
“It is true that T&TEC has not been ab­sorb­ing the pow­er com­ing from this so­lar plant,” Padarath told Busi­ness Guardian. Padarath said the is­sue stems from de­ci­sions made dur­ing the project’s plan­ning stages un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.
“The lack of vi­sion and due dili­gence from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion did not pro­vide for a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis in terms of how it would im­pact the op­er­a­tional cost of T&TEC, and there­fore right now it is in re­view be­tween par­ties, and more will be said about this in the lat­er stages.”
Padarath said he had toured the Brechin Cas­tle fa­cil­i­ty with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal sev­er­al months ago.
“As you will re­call, this project was done by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion at Brechin Cas­tle, which co­in­ci­den­tal­ly is in my con­stituen­cy. I have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tour the fa­cil­i­ty along­side the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy a cou­ple of months ago, and it is true that there is no bat­tery back­up at this fa­cil­i­ty for these so­lar farms.”
With­out bat­tery stor­age, ex­cess elec­tric­i­ty can­not be re­tained when de­mand is low or when the grid is un­able to ac­cept ad­di­tion­al re­new­able gen­er­a­tion. In­stead, elec­tric­i­ty that can­not be ex­port­ed to the trans­mis­sion net­work is ef­fec­tive­ly lost.
The is­sue high­lights one of the chal­lenges fac­ing re­new­able en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly where elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems were orig­i­nal­ly de­signed around con­ven­tion­al gen­er­a­tion rather than in­ter­mit­tent re­new­able sources such as so­lar.
The rev­e­la­tion rais­es ques­tions about one of T&T’s flag­ship re­new­able en­er­gy projects, which was ex­pect­ed to sup­ply up to 8 per cent of the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty while free­ing up nat­ur­al gas for high­er-val­ue us­es, in­clud­ing ex­ports and the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.
The Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Ltd (BC­SL) fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed in the Cou­va-Tabaquite-Tal­paro re­gion, is T&T’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm. The com­pa­ny is joint­ly owned by Shell (35 per cent), bpTT (35 per cent) and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) (30 per cent). The so­lar farm is a short dis­tance from the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.
Asked whether the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm is cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty or has ef­fec­tive­ly be­come a white ele­phant, the min­is­ter said the fa­cil­i­ty is not gen­er­at­ing pow­er at this time.
“It is not pro­duc­ing any elec­tric­i­ty right now. The prop­er due dili­gence and com­pli­ance with con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments was not done by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.
They (so­lar farm) went off our grid at the end of Jan­u­ary 2026,” said Padarath.
On Ju­ly 22, 2025, bpTT an­nounced that Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Lim­it­ed had achieved first elec­trons, mark­ing the start of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion at the coun­try’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar fa­cil­i­ty.
The com­pa­ny said elec­tric­i­ty from the south­ern seg­ment of the so­lar farm had been suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ered to the T&TEC sub­sta­tion at Brechin Cas­tle and had be­gun sup­ply­ing clean­er en­er­gy in­to T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty net­work.
The re­lease stat­ed that the first elec­trons were trans­mit­ted on Ju­ly 17, 2025, with the south­ern sec­tion ex­pect­ed to grad­u­al­ly ramp up pro­duc­tion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 megawatts (ac) while work con­tin­ued on the north­ern seg­ment ahead of full com­mis­sion­ing in the fourth quar­ter of 2025.
Once ful­ly com­mis­sioned, the so­lar farm was ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er up to 92 megawatts (al­ter­nat­ing cur­rent) in­to the na­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty grid, mak­ing it the largest util­i­ty-scale so­lar farm in the Caribbean.
The project was al­so ex­pect­ed to pro­vide ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8 per cent of T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, free­ing up nat­ur­al gas that could in­stead be di­rect­ed to petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­ers and oth­er down­stream in­dus­tries.
That shift was viewed as an im­por­tant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit be­cause ad­di­tion­al nat­ur­al gas ex­ports and down­stream pro­duc­tion have the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate in­creased for­eign ex­change earn­ings for the coun­try while re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions from elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion.
The con­sor­tium de­scribed the project as a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward di­ver­si­fy­ing T&T’s en­er­gy mix while sup­port­ing the coun­try’s grow­ing elec­tric­i­ty de­mand.
How­ev­er a source fami­lar with the project said, “The so­lar farm was not de­signed with bat­tery stor­age, as such any pow­er it pro­duces can­not be stored.”
Sources al­so in­di­cat­ed that T&TEC is re­ly­ing on pro­vi­sions with­in its con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with the project com­pa­ny that al­low it to de­cline tak­ing the elec­tric­i­ty be­ing gen­er­at­ed.
Busi­ness Guardian un­der­stands the is­sue ex­tends be­yond sim­ply com­par­ing the cost of so­lar pow­er with elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from nat­ur­al gas.
T&TEC cur­rent­ly pur­chas­es most of its elec­tric­i­ty from In­de­pen­dent Pow­er Pro­duc­ers (IPPs), which gen­er­ate pow­er us­ing nat­ur­al gas sup­plied by NGC at a sub­sidised price. Be­cause of that sub­sidy, T&TEC pays about $0.05 per kilo­watt-hour (kWh) for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from nat­ur­al gas.
With­out the sub­sidy, the cost of gen­er­at­ing that same elec­tric­i­ty would rise to about $0.13 per kWh. Elec­tric­i­ty from the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm would be sup­plied to T&TEC at rough­ly $0.09 per kWh. While that makes so­lar pow­er more ex­pen­sive than elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced us­ing sub­sidised nat­ur­al gas, it re­mains sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er than elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed with­out the sub­sidy.
Sources said the project was nev­er in­tend­ed to pro­vide on­ly the cheap­est elec­tric­i­ty. It was al­so de­signed to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions, di­ver­si­fy T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply and help the coun­try meet its cli­mate com­mit­ments.
Busi­ness Guardian was al­so told NGC’s in­vest­ment analy­sis found the project to be fi­nan­cial­ly at­trac­tive. The ex­pect­ed In­ter­nal Rate of Re­turn (IRR) ex­ceed­ed the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­nal hur­dle rate af­ter tak­ing in­to ac­count the ad­di­tion­al val­ue of nat­ur­al gas that would no longer be re­quired for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion.
By re­plac­ing some gas-fired elec­tric­i­ty with so­lar gen­er­a­tion, less sub­sidised nat­ur­al gas would be con­sumed by the pow­er sec­tor. That gas could in­stead be redi­rect­ed to high­er-val­ue us­es, in­clud­ing the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try or ex­port mar­kets, al­low­ing NGC to earn greater rev­enues while the coun­try si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ex­pand­ed its re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty.
Con­sor­tium re­mains tight-lipped
Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed bp, Shell and NGC seek­ing com­ment on why elec­tric­i­ty from the project is not be­ing in­te­grat­ed in­to the grid.
On­ly bp re­spond­ed.
“As a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, bp does not com­ment on con­fi­den­tial con­trac­tu­al and com­mer­cial arrange­ments re­lat­ing to the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm.”
Shell and NGC did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment up to pub­li­ca­tion.
The ab­sence of de­tailed pub­lic ex­pla­na­tions leaves unan­swered ques­tions sur­round­ing the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments be­tween the project com­pa­ny and T&TEC, in­clud­ing the pro­vi­sions that re­port­ed­ly al­low the util­i­ty not to ac­cept elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by the fa­cil­i­ty.
The sit­u­a­tion al­so rais­es broad­er ques­tions over whether ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment will be re­quired to strength­en the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture or in­tro­duce en­er­gy stor­age sys­tems ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing greater re­new­able en­er­gy pen­e­tra­tion.
Bat­tery stor­age has in­creas­ing­ly be­come a key com­po­nent of util­i­ty-scale so­lar de­vel­op­ments glob­al­ly be­cause it al­lows ex­cess day­time gen­er­a­tion to be stored and re­leased dur­ing pe­ri­ods of peak elec­tric­i­ty de­mand or when so­lar gen­er­a­tion de­clines.
With­out that ca­pa­bil­i­ty, so­lar fa­cil­i­ties re­main de­pen­dent on the grid’s abil­i­ty to im­me­di­ate­ly ab­sorb all elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced.
Project launched in 2023

Con­struc­tion of the Brechin Cas­tle project of­fi­cial­ly be­gan on April 12, 2023, when the for­mer gov­ern­ment held a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny to mark the start of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first util­i­ty-scale so­lar de­vel­op­ment.
The 112-megawatt al­ter­nat­ing cur­rent so­lar de­vel­op­ment com­pris­es two sites Brechin Cas­tle and Or­ange Grove and is owned by con­sor­tium part­ners bp Al­ter­na­tive En­er­gy T&T and Shell Re­new­ables Caribbean.
The project was de­signed to gen­er­ate ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 megawatt-hours of green elec­tric­i­ty an­nu­al­ly, enough to sup­ply the equiv­a­lent of about 42,500 homes while re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions.
De­vel­op­ment and con­struc­tion were man­aged by Light­source bp, while Grupotec Ser­vi­cios Avan­za­dos S.A. was se­lect­ed as the prin­ci­pal con­trac­tor for con­struc­tion at both sites.
SDV West In­dies Lim­it­ed was ap­point­ed to pro­vide the high-volt­age con­nec­tions link­ing the project to T&TEC’s trans­mis­sion net­work.
The project reached fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion in De­cem­ber 2022 be­fore con­struc­tion com­menced the fol­low­ing year.
While the in­fra­struc­ture has now been built and elec­tric­i­ty is be­ing gen­er­at­ed, the in­abil­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly feed that pow­er in­to the na­tion­al grid threat­ens to un­der­mine many of the ben­e­fits orig­i­nal­ly pro­mot­ed when the project was an­nounced.
In Oc­to­ber 2021, then then Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the es­ti­mat­ed cost to build the plants in Brechin Cas­tle and Or­ange Grove was US$100 mil­lion.
A source close to the project said that the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm was in­tend­ed to mark the be­gin­ning of T&T’s tran­si­tion to­ward clean­er elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and to re­duce de­pen­dence on nat­ur­al gas for do­mes­tic pow­er pro­duc­tion. In­stead, the project has ex­posed the op­er­a­tional and con­trac­tu­al chal­lenges that can emerge when re­new­able gen­er­a­tion comes on stream be­fore the sup­port­ing grid in­fra­struc­ture and com­mer­cial arrange­ments.

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