Tonga’s ambitious goal to achieve 50% renewable energy this year has been moved to 2021, confirmed Tonga Power Ltd (TPL) at a stakeholder seminar on 28 February.

Nik Fonua, TPL Strategic Development & Engineering Manager explained that negative impacts such as the coronavirus, in terms of supply of materials, and other things “we aren’t in control of” has had an effect on delivery timelines.

“Unfortunately, we won’t actually achieve the 50% target until the end of 2021.”

However, at the same time TPL is exploring a more aggressive plan to try and achieve the target by the end of this year.

Nik said this “involves an additional independent power producer, which would be able to bring the target forward to achieve at the end of this year” but a decision would be made in the near future.

TPL CEO, Seti Chen said although there are some delays the positive is that there are projects that will be completed in the first or second quarter next year “that will enable us to move forward and reach our target of 50% renewables”.

Electricity cost

Over the last 10 years, Seti said Tonga’s renewable energy has moved toward solar and wind to reduce reliance on diesel and help reduce electricity costs for consumers.

If TPL completes all their projects by either the end of this year or next year, the price of electricity to consumers could be “around .73 seniti per kilowatt hour”. (In January it was .7999 pkh).

He said by the end of 2020 with all the projects completed, “our dependence on diesel will be around 41%”.

“The remainder will come from our solar generation, our wind generation and also our batteries as well to help fully utilize the excess renewable energy that we have.”

Currently, TPL has six renewable energy projects in progress on Tongatapu, 'Eua, and Vava'u.