Update of Our Role in Oil Nut Bay’s Green Technologies

Pure Eco’s Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Larry Oswald, discusses green technologies and our company’s role at the Oil Nut Bay resort development site in the British Virgin Islands.  I’ve included the article from the BVI Beacon below, but just in case you want to learn more, follow this link http://bvibeacon.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2344&Itemid=5

(From the BVI Beacon, December 2, 2009) – As all eyes turn to Copenhagen — where this month world leaders will meet to hammer out a new global consensus on climate change — Dr. Larry Oswald is focused a little closer to home. Dr. Oswald, who spent the last ten years helping to develop Chrysler’s electric subsidiary, Global Electric Motorcars (GEM), is now working with Oil Nut Bay developers to bring green technologies to the Virgin Gorda resort.

To the ONB developers, that will mean solar panels and thermal water heaters, wind turbines, composting, and recycling of treated sewage for methane production or irrigation.

“We are trying to create a closed-cycle environment,” Dr. Oswald said last month during an interview from his Michigan home, where he and his sons operate an environmental-technology consulting firm.

Like other developers in the territory, Dr. Oswald is faced with familiar challenges. Green technology is costly anywhere, but in the Virgin Islands it can be almost twice as expensive as traditional technology.

For instance, a one-megawatt wind turbine costs more than $3 million to install in the United States. Here, he estimates it will cost around $5 million.

At ONB, Dr. Oswald guessed that wind generation could save the resort about $650,000 annually in electric bills, and said it would take between eight to ten years before the developer sees a profit on its investment.

But to the engineer, the alternative energy will provide a reliable source of electricity to the ONB community, and, ultimately, to the North Sound as well.

“It is the right thing to do for the future,” Dr. Oswald said. “So, we are doing it maybe for selfish reasons to begin with, but the reality is that it is not selfish in the long run.”

Developers at ONB hope to install two wind turbines on the Atlantic coast, hidden from most visitors’ view. (“If one person considers them ugly, then we are in trouble,” he quipped.) Together, the towers could produce as much as 1.5 megawatts of power during peak output periods.

But there is still research to be done. “We are doing a wind study to understand what kind of utilisation, what part of the peak, you will actually get on average,” Dr. Oswald said.

While developers will build the major elements of the ONB community, independent buyers will finance home construction, which will be regulated by a strict building code. Solar panels and thermal water heaters will be a must, Dr. Oswald explained.

“At this point in time, we do not have plans to put in a large solar array,” he added.  “Every owner must install between three to five kilowatts of electric power, which they can use at their house first. But they have to be net metered to the ONB electric grid.”