THE GLEANER, THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2017 • www.jamaica-gleaner.com •gleanerjamaica •B7

jamaicagleaner • FEATURE

Recollections from adevastating tsunami
Amitabh Sharma
Contributor

FILE

Hands-on training is a key element of Wigton courses. Here (frome left) Renford Smith, Marcus Grant and Alan
Searchwell connect the electrical components of a solar panel at the Wigton Renewable Energy Training Lab in Rose
Hill, Manchester, recently.

Wigton could stimulate
renewables revolution
Petre Williams-Raynor
Contributing Editor“BY BEING natural and sincere,one often can create revolutions
without having sought them.”
The Wigton Wind Farm team could bedrawing inspiration from these words by
French fashion designer Christian Dior, as it
rolls out a training programme designed tofuel interest and inspire further action on
renewable energy in Jamaica.
“It is open to anybody who has an interest.
It is open to the general public,” said Sanja
Simmonds, engineer and training
coordinator at the wind farm,
which is located at Rose Hill
in Manchester where they
began the renewable energy
training courses this year.
In January, the farm
trained 20 people fromacross sectors — private andpublic, and including students
as young as 19 years old — inphotovoltaics.
“Once you have an interest, it justgoes from there,” Simmonds noted. “(Thetraining) is how we can stimulate thatinterest and have greater interest for thetechnologies.”
The first training course ran for threedays, as will the next one looking at solar
thermal energy to be held in April.
The third training course, which will focus
on wind energy and hydro, will be held inJuly. The final one for the year will be held
in November and focus on bio-energy.

Up to now, Simmonds said they had
been careful to avoid over-saturation, witheach course having a cap of 15 participants, with provisions for no more than anadditional five.
“We don’t want anyone lost. If you havetoo many people, you may have persons sitting around and not paying attention. What
we want is for participants to be fully
engaged and hands-on,” he said.
“The delivery of the first course wasextremely effective, based on the feedback
we got. The training courses are not for you
to only come and sit down before aPowerPoint. It is 50 per cent theory and 50 per cent practical. So we had participants(from the first trainingcourse) actually doing,for example, photovoltaic installation,
sizing wires, sizing panels, etc.,” Simmonds added.
The training coordinatorexplained further the thinking
behind Wigton’s efforts.
“Previously, Wigton’s tag line was‘Making renewables a breeze’. Now our tagline is ‘securing Jamaica’s energy future’.
To secure the energy future, you could do itin multiple ways. You could do it from acommercial point of view, which is what
Wigton is. So we harness clean energy fromthe wind,” he explained.
“You could also do it from a technicalstandpoint, which is where we train. So weare trying to create interest in renewableenergy and ensure that people have a better

appreciation for it. So it is twofold — thecommercial side and the technical side,” theengineer added.

MINIMAL SCALE
The plan, he said, is to have the programme be annual.
“The courses will develop as time goeson. We didn’t want to start it five days andthen people wanted three. So we started it
on a minimal scale to see what the feedback
would be like, and the feedback was reallyexceptional,” Simmonds said.
“So now we will look at expanding thecourses. Maybe in the future we will have fivedays of courses or even two weeks,” he said.
They also have their sights set on having
the courses accredited.
“Currently, it is just a certificate of participation (that participants receive), but as we goalong, we are trying to figure out how we canget the courses certified,” Simmonds noted.
He was, however, quick to emphasise:“We are not trying to compete against theother institutions providing the training.
What we are trying to do is stimulate theinterested among the general public andthen grow that interest.”“When we talk about the energy policy,
one of the core parts of it is to increase
renewable energy penetration into the grid.
If you are to do so, you have to make people
aware of the type of technologies that you
are pushing,” he added.
pwr.gleaner@gmail.com

MATSUSHIMA, Japan:
MARCH 11, 2011 is clearly etched in Yuasa Tsunoda’s mind:she was on a cruise boat on the seas off Matshushima Bay, eastern Japan, sharing with visitors the beauty of the islands in thebay area, when the crew received information that an earthquake
had struck and a tsunami warning issued.
“My instinct was to stay calm. Passenger safety was important,” Tsunoda, a tour guide, said. “We returned to the shore andevacuated all the passengers to the third floor of the building ofthe port.”
And the tsunami struck; a wall of water rose and inundated
Matshushima Bay. But the passengers and the crew from thecruise boat were safe.
“It is the power of Jizo (Buddhist deity, who is protector of thevulnerable, especially children, travellers, and expectant mothers) and the god of Shiyogama that saved us,” Tsunoda said.
The tsunami surge stopped just outside the gate of Zuiganji,
one of Buddhism’s holy temples in Japan; a wooden marker
bears testament.
Sensei (teacher or master) Yoichi Chiba, a monk at Zuiganji,
was one of the first responders.
“We had people coming into the temple, locals and tourists,
and we immediately moved them to the hills behind the temple,”
Chiba, general affairs director at Zuiganji, informed. “It wasvery cold and also started to snow, and the conditions were notgood, so we moved the people to the temple after the tsunami
had passed.”

CALM COMPOSURE
Chiba was in constant touch with the authorities and got
updates from the radio broadcasts. After the waters had subsided, he went to the local government offices and arranged for abus to evacuate the tourists.
“It was the blessings of Date Masamune (samurai warrior andruler of Matsushima) that we were able to avert a major disaster,” Chiba, attired in a black robe, with a calm composure, said,referring to the decision on where to build the historic temple.
Meanwhile, six years on, Richard Halberstadt, director ofIshnomaki Community and Info Center, cannot control his emotions as he recalls one of his closest friends who was swept awayin the tsunami surge.
“I don’t understand why him, as he was into the scout movement, and trained people on disaster preparedness,” Halberstadt
said, tears brimming in his eyes and voice choking. It is a day,he says, which was out of a biblical prophecy.
Still, on most days at least, Halberstadt, like others in thiscoastal fishing town, find a reason to smile as they rebuild,rising above the rubble.

PHOTO BY AMITABH SHARMA

Sensei (teacher or master) Yoichi Chiba, a monk atZuiganji temple at Matsushima. He was one of the first
responders when the tsunami struck on March 11,
2011.

Wigton engineer urges energy efficiency
WITH AN increase in oil prices an everclear and present danger and climatechange realities a threat to, in particular, small island states, such as Jamaica,
improving energy efficiency is now
more important than ever.
This reminder has come from Sanja
Simmonds, an engineer at Wigton
Wind Farm, who specialises in windenergy and hydroelectric power.
Also important, he said, is the moveto have renewables form a greater percentage of Jamaica and the Caribbean’senergy mix.
In the case of Jamaica, the energy
policy aims for 20 per cent while thegoal for the Caribbean Community is47 per cent by 2027.
“Jamaica, take a look around and see
what is happening. Currently, the priceof oil is a low price, which is around
US$50 a barrel. But it was also cheap in
the 1970s and in the 2000s before thecrisis happened. So it is important tounderstand that the push and drive inrenewables is something we should takeseriously,” Simmonds told The Gleaner.
Wigton, he noted, is dong its part —beyond even the most recent and now
year-old expansion that sees it supply-

Training coordinator-engineer at Wigton WInd farm, Sanja Simmonds(left), tells the Minister of Science, Technology and Energy Dr Andrew
Wheatley and Wigton Wind farm’s chairman, Dwayne Smith,about the Educational Hydroelectric Micro-Station, one of the many
instruments at the Renewable Energy Training Laboratory at Wigton
Wind farm.

ing 62.7 megawatts of electricity to thenational grid.
“If you look at our training facility at
Rose Hill, our roof is 50/50 — half of
it collects rainwater and we use thatwater in the building for all purposes
because we treat it. The other half aidsin powering the building (as) it is aphotovoltaic roof,” he said.
“We also recycle our old plasticbottles. We push renewables and sustainable energy as far as possible. It is
one of the ways you can secure yourcountry’s energy future,” Simmonds
added.
For him, improving energy efficiency
comes first — before the installation oftechnology such as photovoltaics.
“A lot of times companies are notenergy efficient. Before you have thetechnology, you have to have energy
efficiency,” he said, pointing to theneed for energy audits — some ofwhich have been carried out by thePetroleum Corporation of Jamaica insome schools islandwide.
“It is pointless you put in any type of
renewable energy system and you are
not energy efficient. So do your energy
audits and see what you can fix first.
After you are efficient, then you look at

the technology and see what is feasible
or suitable,” noted Simmonds, who isalso the training coordinator at Wigton.
Phase one of the Wigton Wind
Farm was commissioned in 2004
when 20.7 megawatts of electricity
was brought online. Phase two followed later with an additional 18
megawatts and then, only last year,
another 24 megawatts.
The farm currently extracts energy
from wind using three types of wind turbines — the Neg Micon (NM52-900KW) out of the Netherlands, the V802.0MW developed by Danish manufacturers Vestas and the other – G802.0MW – developed by Spanish manufacturers Gamesa, who handled the third
phase of the most recent expansion.
Climate change, meanwhile, presents
a variety of threats, among themwarmer global temperatures fuelled byincreasing greenhouse gas emissions
from human consumption of fossil
fuels such as oil.
Regionally, as globally, actors fromthe scientific community have urged amove to renewables as one essential
response measure.
pwr.gleaner@gmail.com