Across the Caribbean, renewable energy projects face familiar challenges: small, islanded grids, tight planning margins, growing renewable penetration, and climate hazards that shape every technical decision.
Yet despite these shared conditions, some of our members have indicated that the initial feeling of starting from scratch can be overwhelming. Informally members connect with each other and sometimes as the move through their project’s lifecycle and reach challenges. Feasibility studies are repeated, interconnection questions resurface, and lessons from commissioning are often rediscovered rather than reused.
The work is being done — but much of the learning doesn’t travel as efficiently across departments or between utilities. Even within a single utility, knowledge can remain siloed between planning, engineering, and operations, and when staff roles change or time passes, it can be hard to retrieve. It is understandable that within limited bandwidth and resources, the space to connect may not be top of mind.
Learning in Cycles — Sharing Remains the Challenge
We are curious as to how we can address this issue and we feel the need to dive deeper beyond our CARILEC workshops, or discussions.
We organize discussions around the renewable project lifecycle — from planning and feasibility, through design and commissioning, into operations. This framing reflects how utilities actually experience projects.
The challenge is making that insight move beyond workshops. Addressing barriers to sharing within and across utilities is critical, especially as hazards like stronger storms, climate stress, and grid volatility make operational risks more urgent.
An Invitation to Reflect on how to create a Stronger Culture of Sharing Project Insights?
- What would make renewable energy project experiences easier to share?
- What safeguards are needed for sharing to occur more affectively?
Where do projects most often slow down or become complex?
What knowledge is hardest to move between departments?
Which lessons still don’t reach new projects?
If a single sharing barrier were addressed, what difference would it make?
Even brief reflections are valuable.
Join the Conversation
This isn’t a finished solution — it’s a conversation CARILEC members can shape together. As renewable deployment grows and hazards intensify, learning faster from each other — and ourselves — is becoming essential. Click here to discuss in our forum.