Polaris Renewable Energy plans to spend up to US$60 million on a Puerto Rico battery project. The company, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol PIF, said on 20 October 2026 that it had awarded and signed a supply contract with Trina Energy Storage Solutions (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., which trades as Trina Storage, for the battery energy storage system at its Punta Lima wind farm site. A battery energy storage system, or BESS, is a bank of large batteries connected to the grid that stores electricity when it is cheap or plentiful and releases it when the grid needs it. It put the total estimated gross capital cost at US$55 million to US$60 million, to be funded from cash on hand.

For the Cayman Islands the project is a working comparison rather than a direct investment. Grand Cayman's sole electricity supplier, Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC), has operated a 20 MW utility-scale battery since September 2024 and says it has been shortlisted by the regulator for a 22.5 MW solar-and-storage plant. The Puerto Rico contract sets out what a battery almost twice the size of CUC's costs, how it is paid for, and what its owner expects it to earn.

What Polaris has signed

The Punta Lima system will be a single 35.7 MW battery with an eight-hour duration. Under its agreement with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the island's public power utility, the battery will provide 71.4 MW of what the agreement calls "Storage Capability" through two four-hour delivery blocks. Polaris's statement of 12 May 2026 put the same figure as 35.7 MW multiplied by two.

Polaris Power US, Inc., the wholly owned subsidiary that will install, own and run the battery, is named in the agreement as resource provider, while a second subsidiary, Punta Lima Wind Farm, LLC, remains owner of the wind farm on the same site. Polaris Power US will receive monthly fixed and performance-based payments from PREPA for 20 years from the date the system enters commercial operation. Polaris said it expects the project to contribute about US$12.5 million of EBITDA, a measure of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, in its first year. By comparison, Polaris reported adjusted EBITDA of US$13.7 million for the whole company in the quarter to 30 June 2026.

Trina Storage is due to deliver the battery containers in March or April 2027. Commercial operation is expected in the third quarter of 2027.

Marc Murnaghan, chief executive officer of Polaris, said in the 20 October statement: "The execution of the supply contract with Trina Storage is a significant milestone in advancing our investment in Punta Lima, moving the project from its contractual framework into equipment procurement and implementation. This investment reflects our confidence in Puerto Rico's long-term energy transition and our commitment to delivering critical storage capacity that will enhance grid reliability and resilience."

Trina Storage, according to the release, has 30 GWh of battery projects commissioned or under execution worldwide, including more than 6 GWh across Latin America and the Caribbean. The release names only the Singapore entity as the contracting party and does not identify the battery chemistry or the manufacturing location of the containers.

A lower estimate than in July

The October cost figure is lower than the one Polaris gave investors three months earlier. In its second-quarter results on 30 July 2026, the company estimated gross capital expenditure for the same project at US$70 million to US$75 million "before giving effect to any available Investment Tax Credits", and said it expected the project to qualify for U.S. tax credits that could be monetised and offset about 30% to 40% of eligible costs, an estimated benefit of US$20 million to US$25 million.

The 20 October release does not say whether the new range of US$55 million to US$60 million is before or after those credits, or what else has changed. It describes the cost as covering the battery system, a medium-voltage transformer, tariffs and balance of plant, the industry term for the site works, cabling and connections around the main equipment. The company's cautionary statement lists "changes in equipment, construction, labour, transportation, tariff and other project costs" among the factors that could move the figure again. The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) has relied on Polaris's own published statements for the figures in this report.

Polaris reported total cash of US$98.8 million at 30 June 2026, including US$5.6 million of restricted cash, against current and long-term debt of US$216.8 million. It paid a quarterly dividend of US$0.15 a share in August, and said its development spending had risen as it advanced solar and storage opportunities in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Revenue from energy sales in the quarter was US$19.9 million, down from US$21.6 million a year earlier, which the company attributed mainly to lower production. Murnaghan said in that report: "Combined with the execution of our BESS agreement in Puerto Rico, these milestones significantly strengthen our development pipeline and position Polaris to deliver long-term contracted growth while maintaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation and financial management."

How Puerto Rico did it

The contract sits inside Puerto Rico's Accelerated Storage Addition Program, known as ASAP. The programme was proposed by LUMA Energy, the private operator of Puerto Rico's transmission and distribution grid, and allows independent power producers that already sell electricity to PREPA to add batteries at their existing sites under a standard offer contract, applied to all participants on the same terms, rather than through a competitive tender.

Filings with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, the island's energy regulator, record that LUMA reported significant interest from existing generators when it presented the concept in April 2024. The filings describe the programme as one in which the generator, not the utility, funds and builds the battery at its own site, and which does not require federal funding. On 8 May 2024 the Energy Bureau determined that the concept was aligned with Puerto Rico's energy public policy, which it said aims to "guarantee every consumer's right to receive a reliable, stable, and excellent electric power service at a cost that is accessible, just, and reasonable", and with the island's integrated resource plan, which the Bureau said "considers 1,500MW of BESS as part of the renewable procurement efforts". LUMA filed the first standard offer agreements for existing generators in October 2024, and the Bureau approved four draft agreements on 1 November 2024.

Polaris's route through that process took most of a year. PREPA's governing board approved its standard offer agreement on 19 February 2026. Puerto Rico's Financial Oversight and Management Board, the federally appointed body that oversees the territory's finances, approved it on 8 May 2026. Polaris Power US signed the agreement on 5 June 2026. The supply contract with Trina Storage followed on 20 October.

What Cayman has, and what it is bidding for

CUC commissioned Grand Cayman's first utility-scale battery, a 20 MW system built as two 10 MW units at its North Sound plant, in September 2024. In its 2026 Sustainability Report, published in September 2026, the company said the battery "boosted fleet efficiency by 3.2% and generated an impressive [US]$4.6 million in fuel savings" in 2025, and that the savings were passed through to customers' fuel charges. Together with upgrades to five of its generating units, CUC estimated that it saved about 2.2 million imperial gallons of fuel in 2025, worth about US$7.9 million.

The battery provides spinning reserve, the standby capacity a grid keeps ready to cover a sudden loss of supply. CUC's report says the Cayman Islands National Energy Policy targets 70% renewable energy penetration by 2037 and 100% by 2045, and describes the battery as "a vital bridge, providing the grid stability needed to integrate large-scale solar power". CUC said it had issued US$50 million in green notes to fund projects of that kind, with third-party assurance over how the money was allocated. Richard Hew, president and chief executive officer of CUC, said when the report was released: "Our 2026 Sustainability Report highlights the progress we have made while reaffirming our commitment to strengthening resilience, advancing sustainability, supporting future generations and driving affordability for our customers."

The same report records that CUC bid for a 22.5 MW dispatchable solar plant with battery storage in a tender run by the Utility Regulation and Competition Office (OfReg), which licenses and regulates electricity generation in the Cayman Islands, and was, in the company's words, "shortlisted as a top-ranked bidder in 2026". The report, published in September, does not say when OfReg expects to select the winning bid, and OfReg had made no public announcement of an award that TCJ could find by 21 October 2026.

The two batteries are not alike. Polaris's system is 35.7 MW against CUC's 20 MW, will store eight hours of output, and will be paid for under a 20-year contract with a public utility. CUC's battery is owned by the utility itself and its benefit to customers is recorded as fuel saved rather than as contract revenue.

Execution risk in the region

Polaris's own results show the other side of Caribbean renewables. In its second-quarter report the company said production at its solar plant in the Dominican Republic "continued to be significantly impacted by grid curtailment", with curtailment of 29% in the quarter, an improvement on the first three months of the year. Curtailment is when a grid operator instructs a plant to reduce or stop output, usually because the network cannot absorb it. Wind generation at Punta Lima itself fell modestly in the quarter, which Polaris put down to lower wind.

Polaris's cautionary statement on the Punta Lima project lists among the risks "weather events, natural disasters and other conditions affecting Puerto Rico", the ability of Trina Storage and PREPA to perform their obligations, supply-chain delays, and "changes in laws, regulations, tariffs, taxes or government policy".

CUC's report refers to the same exposure from the Cayman side. It says the impacts of Hurricane Melissa during the 2025 reporting year "underscored the vulnerability of island communities to extreme weather events", and that CUC sent crews to Jamaica to help restore electricity there. The report also records US$5.4 million spent in 2025 on resilience work, including moving major transmission lines underground.

Polaris describes itself as a Canadian company that acquires, develops and operates renewable energy projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its operating portfolio is a geothermal plant of about 82 MW in Nicaragua, four run-of-river hydroelectric plants of about 39 MW in Peru and Ecuador, three solar projects of about 35 MW in Panama and the Dominican Republic, and the Punta Lima wind farm of about 26 MW in Puerto Rico, which it acquired in 2025. It is also developing three solar-and-storage projects in Mexico of about 250 MWdc with an estimated capital cost of about US$240 million, for which it signed a 30-year framework agreement with the Mexican state utility CFE on 3 July 2026.

The future

Polaris said the Trina Storage agreement calls for the battery containers to be delivered in March or April 2027, with commercial operation expected in the third quarter of 2027 and the PREPA agreement then running for 20 years. The company has not published a construction start date or named a construction contractor.

Three things remain unanswered in Polaris's public record: whether the US$55 million to US$60 million estimate is before or after U.S. tax credits, what the "tariffs" line in the cost estimate covers, and whether any part of the project is financed or insured through Cayman Islands entities. Polaris's next scheduled disclosure is its third-quarter results, for which it announced investor call details on 15 October 2026.