Domestic Solar Energy: A viable Alternative in Trinidad and Tobago? Case Study: HDC Housing. Part 1- The Geographic Insolation Potential

The world’s prospect for climate change presents several profound implications for the ecological and socio-economic environment. But the repercussions expected for the Caribbean basin as a community of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), have the potential to be even more prevalent and pervasive. As such, the region’s industrial capital, Trinidad and Tobago, seeks to embark upon a domestic alternative energy pilot project using solar water heating as a mitigative undertaking through the Government of Trinidad and Tobago’s Housing Development Corporation (HDC). This intended initiative stimulated the research’s concept of full scale photovoltaic electricity generation to meet the energy demands of these homes. In so doing, such an alternative energy scheme would open up avenues for CO2 abatement, carbon trading, energy conservation and diversification; symbolizing a ‘green’ response by the nation in the face of environmental change. Using NASA solar insolation data, length of daylight, energy consumption records as well as the efficiencies of several solar panels on the market, a formula was developed to yield the area of solar panels an HDC home would require to meet its energy demand. The parameters used in the formulae were also subject to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality and consequently, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient test such that the most influential solar factors could be highlighted and further investigated. The geographic location of the nation was also looked at using graphical representations of annual solar insolation distribution and the solar migration at latitudinal and longitudinal cross sections coupled with the nation’s climatic insolation conditions. Such parameters revealed that for a given year, a 150m2 to 300m2 photovoltaic surface should satisfy the energy demands of a moderately consumptive HDC home. Given that solar insolation and number of sunshine hours were found to be the most influential parameters investigated, they are the result of the earth’s orbital alignment with the sun and our tropical/equatorial geography. This reveals low annual insolation variability and high monthly averages of an estimated 6 kWh/m2/day. As such, Trinidad and Tobago has an advantageous geography for solar harvesting as quantified by the islands’ annual insolation distribution and resultant panel areas. Thus based on the solar environment present, Trinidad and Tobago has a high geographic insolation potential such that solar energy can be seen as a plausible alternative to power homes