Spotlight on energy use in Barbados
Fri, 06/17/2016 - 12:00am
By:
Patricia Thangaraj
The highest consumption of energy is actually during the day and not during the night as many organisations and individuals believe.
This is according to the Editor of the Consumer Guide: Energy Efficiency Handbook, Jerry Franklin who delivered a presentation on this handbook at the Stakeholder Consultative Meeting yesterday at the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI).
He said that when it comes to energy consumption and the source that drains the most energy on the energy bill at the end of the month varies from individual households to organisations
with fridges being among the appliances that pull the most energy in households.
“So just an understanding of how we consume energy today. This information came from a document that was commissioned and produced by the Government Department of Energy. But it currently shows from a residential perspective the highest consumer of energy is refrigeration followed by lighting, and refrigeration is so high not
necessarily because a fridge on its own pulls a lot of energy because the instantaneous power requirement for a fridge is not that high, but it is simply because a fridge is on 24 hours and every home has a fridge regardless of what appliances you may have, every home has a fridge. So the fact that is on 24 hours means that it consumes a lot at the end of the month bill so it contributes significantly in the residential space.”
Meanwhile, when it comes to organisations, the highest generator of energy in organisations comes from their air conditioning units.
“When you look at commercial now, you are seeing that no fridge is there not to say that an office may not have a fridge in it, but AC – cooling – is significant and this is the reason why our peak consumption in Barbados is during the day. A lot of people believe that at night we turn on lights, we are watching TV and doing all of these things that the peak is at night.”
However, this is not the case because the day is when it is hot and as a result, this is when organisations would have their air conditioning on and therefore the peak hours of electricity generation is during the day, said Franklin.
“The peak is during the day because of cooling and the hotter that it gets, the more the air condition has to work unless you use some heat reflective technology... to help reduce the heat within the building. So understanding from the very beginning from a national level where our heavy consumption is, is very critical because this informs what we do.”