Installation Numbers: Growth But a Long Way to Go
Approximately 180 residential and small commercial solar systems were installed in Antigua during 2025, representing a 34% year-over-year increase from the approximately 134 systems installed in 2024. This is genuine progress — sustained 30%+ growth rates, if maintained, create meaningful compounding — but the absolute numbers remain small. At an average of 5kW per system, the 180 installations added approximately 0.9MW of new capacity. Total installed solar PV capacity in Antigua at year-end 2025 stands at approximately 2.4MW, across an estimated 420-460 systems (residential, commercial, and institutional combined).
To put 2.4MW in context: APUA's total generation capacity is approximately 100MW (combining APUA and APCL facilities), meaning solar currently represents about 2.4% of total installed capacity and contributes roughly 1.8% of actual electricity generation (the difference reflects that solar generates only during daylight hours while the full generation fleet is available 24/7). By comparison, Barbados had approximately 65MW of solar installed by end-2025 — representing about 30% of its grid capacity. The scale difference is stark.
Carbon Impact of 2025 Installations
The 180 systems installed in 2025, generating a combined approximately 1,261,000 kWh annually, avoided approximately 1,034 tonnes of CO2 per year using the updated 0.82 kg CO2/kWh emissions factor. Across the full installed base of 2.4MW total capacity, the avoided annual emissions are approximately 1,950 tonnes CO2 — roughly equivalent to removing 420 passenger cars from Antiguan roads. This is a meaningful climate contribution for a small island, but it remains a tiny fraction of APUA's total annual emissions of approximately 130,000-140,000 tonnes CO2.
The economic value of solar installed in 2025 deserves recognition: the 180 new systems collectively save their owners approximately XCD 580,000 per year in electricity costs. Over 25 years, those savings are worth approximately XCD 12.5 million in present-value terms — capital that stays in Antiguan households rather than flowing to diesel fuel suppliers. This is the economic development argument for solar that often gets lost in the technical and policy discussions: at scale, solar transforms the energy economy from extraction to retention of local wealth.
2026 Projections
Our 2026 projection is for approximately 250-280 systems to be installed, representing continued growth of 38-55% over 2025. The growth is supported by: the continued import duty waiver, the ECAB solar loan product launch, increased public awareness driven by the APUA rate increase, and growing installer capacity as more trained technicians enter the market. The projection does not include any contribution from a utility-scale project, which would require a separate planning and permitting process. If the ECAB loan program drives strong uptake and APUA's interconnection process improves, the upper end of the range could be exceeded. If permitting bottlenecks worsen or financing remains inaccessible to lower-income households, growth could fall short of the lower bound.