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Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Energy, Senator Darcy Boyce, (centre) in conversation with Chairman of Solaris Global Energy Ltd., Keith Scotland (left) and Chief Executive Officer Vincent McClean. (C. Pitt/BGIS)??

Government wants to see more homes benefitting from having solar water heaters installed and plans are currently on stream to make this a reality.

So says Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Energy, Senator Darcy Boyce, as he addressed the opening ceremony for a new manufacturing facility by Solaris Global Energy Limited at Six Road, St, Philip, last Saturday.

He said: "To enable a successful drive to get solar water heaters into the income groups that generally do not now have them, the costs of such systems will have to be reduced and the financing terms for them made more accommodating. Bringing the costs down will mean doing research and development work into lower cost materials, greater efficiency of energy conversion, less costly manufacturing processes and possibly more appropriate or flexible sizing of systems."

He pointed out that most of the households without solar water heaters were in the lower income brackets, and such individuals deserved as much as those in higher income brackets to realise the gains from having solar water heating in their homes.??

In light of this, Senator Boyce said that initiatives were being taken by Government to encourage research and development, as well as marketing and financing of renewable energy and energy efficiency systems made in Barbados. He noted that this should help in the work needed "to get more appropriate and less costly systems and better financing and marketing of these systems to all householders".

With respect to the role of Solaris Global Energy Limited in this initiative, he said the company had already begun work in research and development as "attested by their introduction of new materials, new technology for heat conversion and more flexible sizing of systems".??

"While Solaris’ work in these aspects of solar water heating would have been achieved before the initiatives recently announced in the last Budget, the approach adopted by Solaris and the results of that approach provide live and successful examples of the kind of improvement Government would like to see in the industry," he declared.

Solaris Global Energy Limited was incorporated in August 2010, in Trinidad and Tobago as a private limited liability company. It manufactures renewable energy products, mainly solar water heaters and sells and installs photovoltaic systems.

cathy.lashley@barbados.gov.bb

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