On East­er Mon­day, the lead­er­ship of the coun­try's most promi­nent en­er­gy re­source man­age­ment agen­cies met for two hours to dis­cuss Good Fri­day's pro­fes­sion­al­ly hu­mil­i­at­ing black­out.The hol­i­day meet­ing seemed to be a ges­ture of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the cit­i­zens of T&T who had gone long hours, as many as 11 for some, with­out elec­tric­i­ty on Good Fri­day.

It was a deft fol­low up to the Prime Min­is­ter's ear­ly morn­ing vis­it to the Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors plant on Fri­day, but there re­mains much about this stun­ning fail­ure of the na­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty grid that re­mains unan­swered.

The Mon­day meet­ing gath­ered top lev­el ex­ec­u­tives from T&TEC, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed and Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, but of­fered lit­tle that wasn't al­ready com­mon­ly known about the black­out. Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine elab­o­rat­ed on the caus­es of both Trinidad's and To­ba­go's black­outs in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, where he an­nounced that an "op­er­a­tor er­ror" at Cove Pow­er Plant in To­ba­go is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Of the stat­ed root cause of the prob­lem in Trinidad, the fail­ure of a by­pass valve sys­tem op­er­at­ed by Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Mr Ram­nar­ine stat­ed, fol­low­ing the East­er Mon­day meet­ing, that there was no ev­i­dence of sab­o­tage and that both com­pa­nies will re­view the sys­tem to en­sure that the prob­lem nev­er re­curs.Un­for­tu­nate­ly, mak­ing that hap­pen isn't as sim­ple as putting parts in place for swift re­pair or adding an­oth­er valve to the ex­ist­ing sys­tem.

The prob­lem with a sin­gle point of fail­ure is that du­pli­cat­ing its func­tion­al­i­ty of­ten means build­ing a par­al­lel in­fra­struc­ture at sig­nif­i­cant ex­pense.That Mon­day's talks turned to the long over­due con­tem­pla­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy sources might ul­ti­mate­ly prove to be the best thing to emerge from this col­lapse of the na­tion­al grid.

In the wake of black­outs in De­cem­ber 2012, which cut elec­tric­i­ty to the north-west of Trinidad; in Au­gust 2011, which cut sup­ply to Port-of-Spain and in Ju­ly 2010, which caused rolling black­outs across the coun­try, pre­ven­tive mea­sures to en­sure that the elec­tric­i­ty grid was made more re­silient to in­di­vid­ual plant fail­ures should have been a high­er pri­or­i­ty.

The fail­ure of elec­tric­i­ty across To­ba­go on Good Fri­day morn­ing, rough­ly in syn­chro­ni­sa­tion with the col­lapse of the grid in Trinidad, re­mains in­ad­e­quate­ly ex­plained. Un­til re­cent­ly, To­ba­go's elec­tric­i­ty grid was boost­ed by diesel-fed gen­er­a­tors at Cove Es­tate.Re­new­able en­er­gy sources are not to­day con­sid­ered to be re­place­ments for ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies feed­ing the elec­tric­i­ty grids of na­tions, but can pro­vide re­lief for a net­work with high lev­els of de­mand and even be­come an added source of en­er­gy.

It's not un­usu­al, in coun­tries with well-de­vel­oped re­new­able en­er­gy so­lu­tions in place, for in­di­vid­u­als to sell their ex­cess elec­tric­i­ty, gen­er­at­ed by such sources as so­lar pan­els and wind tur­bines, back to the grid.At the very least, the en­er­gy min­is­ter is think­ing ad­mirably small as a first mea­sure, and so­lar-pow­ered pub­lic light­ing sys­tems and traf­fic lights would be an im­por­tant first step in en­sur­ing that pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture re­mains sta­ble when the grid fal­ters.

What's need­ed now is a co­her­ent, holis­tic plan to move for­ward from Fri­day's fail­ure to so­lu­tions that are ro­bust, sus­tain­able and sen­si­ble. The ready avail­abil­i­ty of pe­tro­le­um-based en­er­gy has led us to tack­le every prob­lem with that so­lu­tion; it's time for broad­er think­ing that en­com­pass­es all avail­able tech­nolo­gies.