Canada’s Algonquin to Acquire Bermuda Utility BELCO
The acquisition of Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO) by Algonquin has to be good news, and here’s why.
BELCO’s maximum generation capacity is a mere 165 MW (one sixth of one of our coal or nuclear plants), but that power is produced by primarily diesel engines, backed up by gas turbines for peak loads. Sadly, they have absolutely no interest in changing one molecule of their fossil grid-mix.
The pic above features me with my colleague Dennis Lister, member of parliament (at right) and Michael Scott, Bermuda’s equivalent of our Secretary of Energy. It was taken at the end of two days of nonstop meetings with all manner of the island nation’s top people who could possibly have even the remotest effect on Bermuda’s ongoing approach to energy and transportation. I had been brought in to make the case of renewables and electric transportation, with presentations to about a dozen different groups of people.
Bottom line: nothing moved, and I mean nothing, as a result of all these positive and apparently productive conversations. From my reading between the lines, which didn’t take a lot of work, it had eventually become clear that this was due to the enormous political clout that BELCO has on Bermudan policy-making. It was quite obvious that they didn’t want anything to do with progress that might leave them less wealthy and powerful, and even more so, that absolutely no one could do anything about that.
Will Algonquin’s owning Belco make matters better? I don’t know, but they can’t make them worse.
Craig,
Let me see if I understand you correctly. You arrive in Bermuda, a pretty sophisticated island nation of 71,000 people, to tell them what they’re doing wrong with their electricity supply?
The local power company which has been operating since 1906, is reluctant to listen to a self-appointed guru from Santa Barbara, California who doesn’t actually even own an EV as personal transport.
Instead, they preferred selling the ailing power company to the enormous Canadian Algonquin Power & Utilities conglomerate. Algonquin is a corporation with a long history of success and enormous resources.
What did you expect ?
I’ve seen Algonquin’s preliminary proposals which will be finalized once they have completed a full scale comprehensive due diligence study.
Algonquin had a number of advantages, the first being they’re Canadian. The second and most important, is they they can fund not only the purchase but necessary investment to develop superior power infrastracture.
Making money from a small grid with only 46,000 users is not easy. Recovering investment from such a small number of customers will be very difficult without government subsidies.
Fortunately, Bermuda is unique among small island nations in having a very high GDP. All the same, Algonquin will have it’s work cut out to keep it’s commitment to lower electricity prices.