One concrete plan for the Virgin Islands is as follows:

Build a solar plant on 400 acres that would produce 64 Megawatts. (Four hundred acres is 0.6% of St. Croix's land area). This would meet all of St. Croix's needs, with some to spare. A similar plant must be built for St. Thomas-St. John, although undersea cables may shortly be cost-effective, allowing the islands to share. Each plant will cost roughly $300 million.

The solar plant uses parabolic mirrors to heat a working fluid to 700° F. This fluid then drives a Rankin-cycle steam turbine, just like a conventional coal-fired plant. After 9:00 pm, the heat from the sun is used up, and we must burn petroleum coke ("petcoke"), coal, or other inexpensive fuel.

Petcoke is a strong contender because the Hovensa oil refinery produces petcoke as a byproduct. It burns like coal, but it is practically free. It is relatively "dirty" to burn. Scrubbing the exhaust is too expensive in regions where electricity costs 10¢ per kilowatt-hour, however this is no worry when we’re paying 50¢ per kilowatt-hour. When we can pay 18¢ per kilowatt-hour, we will be delighted to burn petcoke and scrub the exhaust. When we stop burning expensive oil, we can afford to pay for the highest level of scrubbing.

We must remain open to all avenues to reduce our WAPA bills and utilize renewable energy sources. In the Virgin Islands we are also considering:

Ocean Thermal, or OTEC.
Great Idea; there is a pilot plant in Hawaii. St. Croix has the necessary water depth and temperature gradient. Problem: no commercially viable plant in the world today.
Wind:
It isn't windy enough here. We go days and weeks without sufficient wind. Tradewinds feel good, but do not contain harvestable energy over our land masses. (Out at sea, 300 feet up, there is sufficient energy...but how to harvest it?)
Geothermal:
St. Kitts has geothermal energy and may be able to sell us electricity through an undersea high voltage Direct Current (DC) cable. The geothermal technology is well understood (e.g. Iceland), but the DC transmission undersea is a bit of a stretch economically.
Waste-To-Energy:
We love this one; it turns (sorted) trash into energy. The burnable stuff is burned, driving a Rankin-cycle steam turbine, and the organic stuff is fermented underground to release methane, which is harvested by pipes inserted into the mound. The big question is: Where are there commercially successful examples?

In addition to the previously mentioned long-term solutions, there are some mid-term solutions under consideration:

1. Tune up WAPA's existing equipment. Use waste heat recovery boilers that save many millions of dollars per year.
2. Buy electricity from the St. Croix Renaissance coal-fired plant. Apparently there is an 18-month lead time for this option.
3. Consider a submarine cable from Puerto Rico where electricity is generated from burning inexpensive fuels such as coal.

Some lawmakers are suggesting an immediate subsidy of the WAPA bill. My skills cause me to focus on the mid- and long-term solutions, however I would support short term relief as part of a comprehensive, concrete plan of action. For example, a 25% subsidy on the individual ratepayer's WAPA bill might be in order.

The best long-term strategy: Using solar energy when the sun is shining, and burning inexpensive fuel when it is not.

Most importantly, this plan uses off-the-shelf technology.

This approach should reduce our electricity cost to under 20¢ per kilowatt-hour.

At latitudes such as ours, the earth's surface receives 1,000 watts of solar energy per square meter. It makes sense to capture it as heat and run a turbine with it to generate electricity.

Incidentally, an individual home can go solar, using photovoltaic panels. These panels turn sunlight directly into electricity. You can even bank or sell the excess power that you generate with the Water & Power Authority. As this occurs during the middle of the day when demands on the utility are highest, the extra current is quite welcome. This is all handled automatically by the components of your solar system. My home has been solar-powered since 1998. For more information on that experience, look to my blog (under "Share Ideas").

It is important that we move forward with a concrete energy plan for the Territory, otherwise we may still be stuck in a rut two years from now. During the process of moving the legislation forward, clarity will come to our approach, and we will refine our plan.

In 2008, the skyrocketing cost of energy overshadows all others, as it begins to erode the rising standard of living we all aspire to and have come to expect. I will make this my number one issue in the 28th Legislature.