At the end of 2000, the Barbados Light & Power Co. had just over 89,000 domestic customers and about 12,300 commercial customers, a total of just over 101,300 customers in all.

In addition, there were over 22,000 street lights on the island. Electricity sales totalled over 704 million kilowatt-hours.

In the 1980’s and early 1990’s Light & Power purchased electricity produced from bagasse during the sugar crop season by Foursquare, Andrew’s and Portvale factories and from the Government’s experimental wind turbine at Lamberts, St. Lucy. Recently sixty photo-voltaic (PV) panels, which generate 2 kilowatt of power have been installed and tied into the grid from the Company’s Seawell generating plant to test the potential of this technology. Another 2 kilowatt set of PV panels has been installed at The Future Centre at Edgehill, St. Thomas, and should be operational in the very near future.

However, the Company is constantly evaluating its energy production options. Discussions have been held with the sugar industry about the possibility of a 50,000-60,000 kilowatt cogeneration plant in conjunction with a new single sugar factory and with the Ministry of Health for a proposed generating plant of 1,000-2,000 kilowatt capacity at Mangrove Pond in St. Thomas to convert the landfill gas into electricity. To date projects have not materialized from these discussions. Light & Power is currently undertaking a feasibility study on the construction of a 10,000 kilowatt wind farm at Lamberts, St. Lucy. If constructed this will have an approximate generating capability of 32 million kWh per year, and will be capable of producing enough power to meet the average annual needs of 10,600 homes.