More to be trained in solar installation
More clients of Verdun House will receive training in solar installation in the near future within Phase 2 of the Substance Abuse Foundation (SAF) Inc.’s solar photovoltaic project.
SAF Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer, Marietta Carrington, revealed this as she spoke during the call-in radio programme ‘Green Economy: Let’s Talk About It’ recently. She was one of the five panellists speaking during the show.
Phase one of the project has seen the all-male residential treatment facility located in St. John generating its own electricity and selling the excess to the Barbados Light and Power Company Limited (BL&P). The electricity is generated from the 502 solar panels which are installed on the rooftops across six buildings at the facility. Some “159.6 kilowatts of power” is generated and it earns SAF Inc. “approximately $100,000 a year”. Some clients of Verdun House and their families receive training as well as obtain CVQs in solar installation within this phase of the project.
The CEO said eight of the individuals who graduated from that cohort “are now working within the sector and the reports that we have gotten are that they are all shining. They are surpassing others who have already been working in this field and of course, all of us at the Substance Abuse Foundation constantly engage with them”.
Carrington told the listening audience that “the success of the roof-mounted system at Verdun has really encouraged us to pursue our plans for perhaps a far more substantial ground-mounted system on lands, which we have at Verdun”.
This system will be set up during Phase 2, which they are into. She said, “At the minute we have an application into Town and Country Planning to allow us to establish a one megawatt solar plant on land that cannot be otherwise used for agriculture at the Substance Abuse Foundation.”
She added it “is a big undertaking. It is going to be an expensive undertaking, but we do believe that there are social investors on the world map that will see the value of us establishing this plant and to support our sustainability goals by contributing to this plant. So we suspect that within the next year to 18 months, once the pandemic settles down and allows the wheels of Government to turn a little more quickly and that our funding appeals bear fruit that very soon we will have another cohort of clients and their families and individuals within the St. John area who will be able to join the team of next set of training that we will be providing”. (MG)