The Do­mini­ca gov­ern­ment says the con­struc­tion of the 10-megawatt ge­ot­her­mal pow­er plant, ex­pect­ed to be the first to be con­struct­ed in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM), is on tar­get to be com­plet­ed by Christ­mas this year.

“A lot of work is tak­ing place. We are re­al­ly on our way to con­struct­ing our 10-megawatt ge­ot­her­mal pow­er plant. Cur­rent­ly, most of the equip­ment (have) been brought on-site. We had a ves­sel in port over a week ago,” said Dr. Vince Hen­der­son, Min­is­ter for For­eign Af­fairs, In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, Trade and En­er­gy.

The Do­mini­ca Ge­ot­her­mal De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (DGDC), the pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship which is dri­ving the pow­er project, said that by har­ness­ing the Na­ture Isle’s vol­canic po­ten­tial, the fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed at Lau­dat, a small vil­lage in the in­te­ri­or of Do­mini­ca, promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce fos­sil fu­el de­pen­den­cy while pro­vid­ing sta­ble, clean en­er­gy to an es­ti­mat­ed 23,000 Do­mini­can homes.

“We are mov­ing on pret­ty well, and I’m very, very, very hap­py and feel con­fi­dent that we’ll be able to get this done in time,” Hen­der­son said.

The com­mis­sion­ing of the Lau­dat plant is ex­pect­ed to be an ear­ly mile­stone in the OECS Decade of Ac­tion for Sus­tain­able En­er­gy De­vel­op­ment, launched in Feb­ru­ary.

The goal is to en­sure that at least 30 per cent of the re­gion’s elec­tric­i­ty comes from re­new­able sources by 2035, though sev­er­al mem­ber states have pledged to ramp up to full green pow­er by then.

Do­mini­ca is one of five mem­ber states in the OECS GEOBUILD Pro­gramme which is ad­vanc­ing ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy in the East­ern Caribbean. Sup­port­ed by the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), the St. Lu­cia-based OECS Com­mis­sion is al­so work­ing to build ca­pac­i­ty in Grena­da, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to ex­plore and de­vel­op the re­gion’s vast ge­ot­her­mal po­ten­tial.

The pro­gramme works to bring eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits be­yond elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion, con­tribut­ing to the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion. It is sup­port­ed by the CDB, the Eu­ro­pean Union Caribbean In­vest­ment Fa­cil­i­ty and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

Hen­der­son said that the Lau­dat project has reached crit­i­cal mile­stones, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of key in­fra­struc­ture com­po­nents.

“We’ve seen the in­stal­la­tion now of the cool­ing sys­tem, which is a huge ra­di­a­tor-type sys­tem with cool­ing tow­ers at the top. The con­struc­tion of the met­al frame took place a few weeks ago, and we’ve seen the in­stal­la­tion of the heav­i­est part of the en­tire pow­er plant,” he added.

Amir Junger, the project man­ag­er from Or­mat Tech­nolo­gies Inc., which is build­ing and will even­tu­al­ly op­er­ate the pow­er plant, said all the struc­ture has been as­sem­bled with the air cool­ers.

“We are as­sem­bling the fan rings with the fan mo­tors and the fans part of the cool­ing sys­tem of the air-cooled con­denser. Be­neath you can see that we are pour­ing the foun­da­tion.”

Ge­ot­her­mal pow­er plants tap in­to un­der­ground heat reser­voirs. They ex­tract steam or hot wa­ter, which dri­ves tur­bines to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty. The used steam is con­densed and hot wa­ter is cooled to be rein­ject­ed un­der­ground to main­tain the reser­voir’s pres­sure and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This process pro­vides a re­new­able, con­stant en­er­gy source with min­i­mal en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

De­spite re­cent rainy con­di­tions, the project re­mains on sched­ule.

“We are not stop­ping. The plan is to have the COD (Com­mer­cial Op­er­a­tion Date) on the 25th of De­cem­ber 2025. That’s the plan. We are do­ing all the ef­forts, keep­ing the sched­ule on a week­ly ba­sis, mon­i­tor­ing things, plan­ning ahead,” Junger said.

Ad­di­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts in­clude work­ing with the elec­tric util­i­ty, Do­mini­ca Elec­tric­i­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Dom­lec), to en­sure pow­er readi­ness and co­or­di­na­tion with an In­di­an com­pa­ny, Kalpataru Projects In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, which is build­ing the trans­mis­sion net­work.

The com­pa­ny will be con­struct­ing 10 kilo­me­tres of trans­mis­sion lines with sub­sta­tions start­ing from Lau­dat in­to Fond Cole on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal, where the pow­er will be in­te­grat­ed in­to the na­tion­al grid

Guade­loupe’s Bouil­lante plant has been op­er­at­ing since 1983. It now sup­plies 15MW with planned ex­pan­sion to 45MW.

The Lau­dat pow­er plant rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in Do­mini­ca’s sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture, sup­port­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners in­clud­ing the World Bank and the CDB, and in­volv­ing strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion with the OECS Com­mis­sion, among oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­ti­ties.