The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs' Na­tion­al Light­bulb Ex­change Ini­tia­tive will head to To­ba­go to­day from 10 am at the Ar­gyle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Ar­gyle.The ini­tia­tive was launched on Ju­ly 13, 2013, at the Pe­nal Rock Road Hin­du School and has since made stops in mul­ti­ple ar­eas through­out the coun­try.

Res­i­dents are in­vit­ed to ex­change two in­can­des­cent light­bulbs for two en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient com­pact flu­o­res­cent light (CFL) bulbs, which last longer, use less en­er­gy and costs less in terms of elec­tric­i­ty us­age. This ini­tia­tive is a core com­po­nent of the min­istry's Na­tion­al En­er­gy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cam­paign, now in its sec­ond phase on which the fo­cus is pro­mot­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion among the pop­u­la­tion.

In ad­di­tion to the light­bulb ex­change, some 25 vis­i­tors may reg­is­ter for an en­er­gy needs as­sess­ment of their home, which may en­ti­tle them to have their most fre­quent­ly used light­bulbs at home switched to CFLs. Par­tic­i­pants in this pro­gramme will be re­quired to pro­vide their two most re­cent elec­tric­i­ty bills be­fore the car­a­van as well as their next two elec­tric­i­ty bills fol­low­ing the out­reach in or­der to as­sess the im­pact of the bulb ex­change.

This im­pact as­sess­ment will be con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with re­searchers at the Physics De­part­ment, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Pref­er­ence will be giv­en to low-in­come house­holds.

The in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed so far shows that 70 per cent of the par­tic­i­pant house­holds ob­tained en­er­gy sav­ings which trans­lat­ed in­to av­er­age mon­e­tary sav­ing per cent on their elec­tric bill af­ter the in­stal­la­tion of CFLs. In­clud­ed in this En­er­gy Day will be pre­sen­ta­tions and games with lots of prizes and give­aways.This pi­lot out­reach ac­tiv­i­ty will be tak­en to com­mu­ni­ties through­out T&T to en­cour­age en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient lifestyles.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said aware­ness of the en­er­gy sec­tor and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy are two ma­jor ini­tia­tives that the min­istry will place spe­cial fo­cus on for the rest of this year, in­clud­ing more out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties in com­mu­ni­ties and events such as the re­cent­ly launched Schools' En­er­gy Car­a­van.