Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has an­nounced plans for a na­tion­wide au­dit of the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to strength­en the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the pow­er sys­tem.

Speak­ing at a light in­stal­la­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Soogrim Ramd­ha­niesingh Recre­ation Ground, La­choos Road in Pe­nal on Mon­day, Padarath said he has in­struct­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of all sub­sta­tions and re­lat­ed fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try with­in the com­ing weeks.

He al­so ad­dressed Mon­day’s pow­er dis­rup­tion, which af­fect­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in Port-of-Spain and Cen­tral Trinidad.

He ex­plained that the out­age was caused by a faulty key­pad at one of Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed’s (TGU) fa­cil­i­ties con­nect­ed to the pow­er grid.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, 13 ar­eas ex­pe­ri­enced low volt­age and, in some cas­es, pow­er out­ages, last­ing up to 35 min­utes in cer­tain lo­ca­tions.

He not­ed that the in­ci­dent un­der­scores the need for con­tin­ued up­grades to in­fra­struc­ture and re­la­tion­ships with pow­er pur­chase sup­pli­ers, in­clud­ing TGU, Pow­er­gen and Trin­i­ty Pow­er.

Speak­ing af­ter the event, Padarath said the chal­lenges with­in the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor were not ad­dressed over the years, in terms of in­fra­struc­ture and di­lap­i­dat­ed mains.

“Whether it was be­cause of the lack of re­sources fi­nan­cial­ly to look af­ter it, that was no ex­cuse for pass­ing the buck and al­low­ing it to de­te­ri­o­rate even fur­ther. What we have been do­ing is try­ing to pri­ori­tise in terms of the fa­cil­i­ties, what can be done now, where we can ac­cess ad­di­tion­al fund­ing, whether it’s through bud­get­ing or whether it’s grant fund­ing or ex­ter­nal fund­ing through bor­row­ings and loans, etc, to ad­dress a lot of the in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges, both in the wa­ter sec­tor and in the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor.”

Not­ing that rene­go­ti­a­tions re­lat­ing to pow­er pur­chase agree­ments with some of the sup­pli­ers, such as Trin­i­ty Pow­er and Pow­er­gen, would start short­ly, he said, they would be en­sur­ing that T&T gets “the best buck out of those arrange­ments” and that there is suf­fi­cient pow­er be­ing man­u­fac­tured on­to the grid “as we get more in­ter­est and in­vest­ment com­ing in­to the coun­try.”

He al­so not­ed that over the last year, T&TEC had re­paired 26,000 street­lights, of which 3,000 were on the high­ways.

T&TEC chair­man Anil Ka­mal added that through their on­go­ing street light­ing up­grade pro­gramme, 2,825 ex­ist­ing high-pres­sure sodi­um lights were re­placed with en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient LED tech­nol­o­gy along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy, Uri­ah-But­ler and Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­ways.

Ka­mal said a fur­ther 500 street­lights will al­so be up­grad­ed along the South­ern Main Road and East­ern Main Road.

“These im­prove­ments will en­hance road­way safe­ty through brighter, more uni­form light­ing, while re­duc­ing en­er­gy con­sump­tion, main­te­nance costs and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, sup­port­ing a more ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able na­tion­al light­ing net­work.”