A solar powered house.
Planning officials have granted building permits and system designers arrived yesterday, anticipating groundbreaking in two weeks on the Cayman Islands first alternative-energy powered home.
James Knapp, resident locally for 15 years, will build the one-storey, 3,388 square foot home in Bimini Drive, near Grand Harbour. He hopes to start, he said, “as fast as humanly possible”, although the designer of the home’s energy systems, Gian-Paolo Caminiti, CEO of New Jersey-based Renewable Energy International (REI), said he hoped to start by late this month.
“I had parked my boat on a lot for five years, and I finally decided to build a house,” Mr Knapp said. “I have geo-thermal to run the air-conditioning and hot water; wind turbines that create 10 kilowatts of electricity; and solar power to make electricity and create hydrogen,” which manufactures power that can be stored for as many as 15 days without sun – “and there is no way in the world that we ever go for 15 days in a row without sun,” Mr Knapp said.
He added that his home required only a seven-kilowatt supply, but had a 30-kilowatt capacity, meaning he could offer power to the Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC) grid for general distribution.
“I have a company called Endless Energy, and this is going to be a model home, a demonstration house, which has all types of alternative energy,” Mr Knapp said.
Mr Caminiti said the excess could be sold back to CUC for redistribution on its national grid.
“We have set up a tier of interconnections on a net-metering principal,” the designer said, although warning that the equipment was expensive. CUC’s new 21-year licence, signed with the Government only last month, ended the company’s traditional monopoly on power generation, allowing access by competitors to the transmission and distribution grid.
Mr Knapp said his new system, by creating excess power, would not only end utility bills, but also enable him to sell sufficient power to CUC that “the system will actually pay me,” he said, pointing out that the house would pay for itself almost immediately.
“The monthly mortgage payment [on the house] is less than my utility bills, so it pays for itself within the first month,” he said.
The house, designed by Island Drafting and being built by Smart Construction Management, both Cayman companies, will take approximately 10 months to complete and cost $883,000, although Mr Caminiti hoped to finish construction late this year.
In an earlier statement from Mr Caminiti’s REI, Mr Knapp explained his motivation:
“The environmental benefits are important, but not the only consideration,” he said. “For me, this is a financial play. With the rising price of energy on Grand Cayman, the numbers work right now to make this a smart move from day one.” He said Butterfield Bank had arranged financing.
In the same statement, Director of the Department of the Environment Gina Ebanks-Petrie told REI her department supported the project, and warned that climate change made such projects increasingly important.
“Given the challenges posed by climate change for our islands, the Cayman Islands Department of Environment very much supports the use of renewable sources of energy,” the director said.
“We are extremely pleased to see private individuals taking the initiative in this area. The Cayman Islands Government has recently signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, so a national discussion needs to take place in the very near future on, among other things, the appropriate mix between renewable and traditional energy sources in meeting the country’s demand for electricity.”
tad@caymannetnews.com | 
