Aleem Khan

With the totemic Pow­er­Gen plant on Wright­son Road in Port of Spain ear­marked for de­com­mis­sion­ing, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is look­ing at al­ter­na­tive ways of sup­ply­ing pow­er to the cap­i­tal city, Deputy Chair­man Ken­neth Pati­no said on Sat­ur­day. T&TEC must "bring 132 kv trans­mis­sion in­to Port of Spain be­cause what will hap­pen is that in two or three years, Pow­er­Gen will be de­com­mis­sion­ing their plant in Port of Spain. Once they have de­com­mis­sioned we got to make sure that we have the in­fra­struc­ture in place to en­sure that we have a re­li­able sup­ply of pow­er in­to the West­ern penin­su­la," Pati­no said. Parts of Port-of-Spain, Mar­aval, St Anns and Diego Mar­tin were plunged in­to dark­ness on Tues­day. "Plans are al­ready in place to bring in the trans­mis­sion. Ac­tu­al­ly what we're do­ing is ex­pand­ing the sub-sta­tions in West­moor­ings and in Fla­ment Street in Port of Spain" to bring in the re­quired pow­er in­to west Trinidad, Pati­no said. He said the com­mis­sion al­so has "to con­tin­ue our work in mak­ing sure we get the full out­put out of the TGU plant in La Brea." He said the in­fra­struc­tur­al work to do that is in train. He said the to­tal out­put of that plant is 720 megawatts.

That is go­ing to feed in­to our na­tion­al grid once the in­fra­struc­ture is prop­er­ly in place. We have to pro­cure a lot of the equip­ment." T&TEC ex­pects the Fla­ment Street and West­moor­ings up­grades to be in ser­vice in time to take over the load from the Pow­er­Gen plant to sup­ply West­ern Trinidad with elec­tric­i­ty, he said. Asked why the plant is be­ing de­com­mis­sioned, Pati­no said, "The in­fra­struc­ture there is be­com­ing very ar­cha­ic and the sim­ple cy­cle ma­chines are not very ef­fi­cient. I mean, they have giv­en hon­or­able ser­vice. Don't get me wrong." Ques­tioned about what will be­come of the lo­ca­tion, he said there is "a lot of work and long-term plan­ning to be done for that lo­ca­tion but it's hard to give a de­fin­i­tive an­swer at this time." On the na­tion­al bud­get, he said once ap­provals were giv­en, T&TEC would have more to say af­ter the bud­get. "Any new gen­er­a­tion (of pow­er) is very cap­i­tal in­ten­sive. Cer­tain­ly we would love to see a re­al­ly good clear pic­ture of our long-term growth. Cer­tain­ly it would link to some in­crease in rev­enue but along­side that is a lot of ex­pen­di­ture. Mean­while, we have ap­plied to the RIC for a rate in­crease but we still await their ap­proval of that," he said. Asked about plans to get in­to so­lar and ki­net­ic en­er­gy, the deputy chair­man of T&TEC said, "As a mat­ter of fact, yes. We are look­ing at that, yes.

I think we have a pro­to­type in place in south us­ing so­lar en­er­gy right now. We are ex­plor­ing that." "All the el­e­ments of re­new­able en­er­gy sources are be­ing looked at," he said. De­mand-side man­age­ment is an­oth­er im­por­tant project of T&TEC's in the near fu­ture, he said. He said that ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about con­serv­ing en­er­gy was very im­por­tant. On Fri­day, Au­gust 10, 2012 at the Is­lam­ic Home for Chil­dren in Gas­par­il­lo, the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Kevin Ram­nar­ine of­fi­cial­ly launched the com­ple­tion of the in­stal­la­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies. "These tech­nolo­gies in­clude a 2kW so­lar pho­to­volta­ic grid-tied grid in­te­grat­ed sys­tem and a wind tur­bine of sim­i­lar ca­pac­i­ty. This project is of great sig­nif­i­cance in that it has pro­vid­ed this home with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­duce their en­er­gy bills by gen­er­at­ing their own elec­tric­i­ty with re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies," Ram­nar­ine said. "This is the first time that both PV (pho­to­volta­ic) pan­els and a wind tur­bine gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty have been tied in­to the grid – to the na­tion­al grid. What this means is that we are able to use the sun's en­er­gy and wind en­er­gy to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. Usu­al­ly our elec­tri city in Trinidad is of course is gen­er­at­ed by burn­ing nat­ur­al gas but not in this in­stance." New source for En­er­gy Min­istry Ram­nar­ine said that from a prac­ti­cal point of view, "what this means is, for ex­am­ple, dur­ing the day the home switched off all its lights, AC units and com­put­ers, then the elec­tric­i­ty from the PV pan­els and wind tur­bine would ac­tu­al­ly move out from the home and is used by oth­er con­sumers in the area.

That what is meant by be­ing tied to the grid. So what this home is ac­tu­al­ly do­ing is gen­er­at­ing pow­er very much like a pow­er gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go." He said that in light of the se­vere con­se­quences to the glob­al cli­mate, Trinidad and To­ba­go must find ways to in­cor­po­rate "a di­ver­si­ty of en­er­gy sources in our na­tion­al en­er­gy mix." He said: "Our Cari­com col­leagues out of ne­ces­si­ty are look­ing for al­ter­na­tives to burn­ing oil for pow­er gen­er­a­tion. In Guyana, they are look­ing at har­ness­ing mas­sive hy­dro­elec­tric po­ten­tial in that coun­try. In Ja­maica there is the Wig­ton wind farm, and in Bar­ba­dos they have been us­ing so­lar wa­ter heaters for many years. The threat of cli­mate change is very re­al for all small is­land economies like those here in the Caribbean where our rel­a­tive­ly small land mass­es with high cli­mate ex­po­sure and lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty makes us par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to po­ten­tial cli­mate change events." He said, in ad­di­tion, re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to in­crease the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of its en­er­gy mix and with con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment, and ul­ti­mate­ly lead to the es­tab­lish­ment of a new in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said, "We have been al­ready told that there are com­pa­nies that are will­ing to set up busi­ness in Trinidad to man­u­fac­ture "wind mills" (wind tur­bines), pho­to­volta­ic cells and so on." He said that col­lab­o­ra­tion among all the key stake­hold­ers is key to pro­mot­ing plans and pro­grammes and there­fore a Re­new­able En­er­gy Com­mit­tee (REC) com­pris­ing all stake­hold­ers was es­tab­lished to de­vel­op re­new­able en­er­gy pol­i­cy, and this Com­mit­tee con­tin­ues to play a key role in the lo­cal RE sec­tor.

Lo­cal con­di­tions dic­tate the types of re­new­able en­er­gy sources that can con­tribute to the en­er­gy mix on a vi­able ba­sis, he said. In the cur­rent sce­nario, in Trinidad, wind tech­nol­o­gy is the most com­pet­i­tive for pow­er gen­er­a­tion for in­te­gra­tion with the na­tion­al pow­er grid, he said. He said the so­lar tech­nol­o­gy in the Gas­par­il­lo build­ing has out­per­formed the wind tech­nol­o­gy, so it varies ac­cord­ing to where you are in Trinidad. A tar­get of 5 per cent of ex­ist­ing peak de­mand - 60 megawatts - is con­sid­ered a re­al­is­tic and achiev­able tar­get by 2022 (that is 5 per cent com­ing from re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies). Op­por­tu­ni­ties are be­ing cre­at­ed over the short-term to uti­lize read­i­ly im­ple­mentable re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies, for ex­am­ple, so­lar wa­ter heaters. The min­is­ter said steps will be tak­en to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er tech­nolo­gies where fea­si­ble. He said the in­ter-re­la­tion­ship be­tween re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy can­not be ig­nored and there­fore lo­cal re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment is be­ing com­ple­ment­ed by mea­sures to in­crease en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and con­ser­va­tion. He said, "It's a sta­tis­ti­cal fact - though un­for­tu­nate - that we are one of the most en­er­gy in­ef­fi­cient coun­tries in the world. That must change. It's note­wor­thy too, that the most en­er­gy ef­fi­cient coun­tries in the world are the world's rich­est coun­tries, and by that of course, we mean the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries."

Asked what is Trinidad and To­ba­go do­ing in the face of this, he said, "Well first of all there is ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and aware­ness cre­ation which is be­ing pro­mot­ed through fa­cil­i­ta­tion of train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams. Sec­ond­ly, stan­dards are be­ing de­vel­oped and those stan­dards will soon be pub­lished for so­lar wa­ter heaters and na­tion­al elec­tric code has been amend­ed to in­clude re­new­able en­er­gy." He said, "As we speak, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion the NEC has been man­dat­ed to is­sue re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) for in­stal­la­tion of so­lar stills and in­door pho­to­volta­ic light­ing for 25 schools as well ex­ter­nal pho­to­volta­ic light­ing for 15 com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, and in all this, To­ba­go has not been left out. We have al­so in­clud­ed To­ba­go. An­oth­er RFP was re­cent­ly is­sued for the con­duct of a wind re­source as­sess­ment pro­gram (warp) on the East coast of Trinidad with the view of es­tab­lish­ing a wind farm for pow­er gen­er­a­tion in that area. He said that any­one who vis­its the East coast knows "that the wind doesn't stop blow­ing in the east coast es­pe­cial­ly in the ar­eas of Man­zanil­la to Ma­yaro. Rec­og­niz­ing that there is a need to sen­si­tize the pop­u­la­tion on the role of en­er­gy in their dai­ly lives as well as con­sid­er­ing us­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cient­ly and ex­plain what RE means. "We (are) about to launch at the min­istry a re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paign us­ing all var­i­ous forms of me­dia. Does the av­er­age cit­i­zen know that his elec­tric­i­ty comes from a nat­ur­al gas reser­voir buried 8000 feet be­low the seafloor? I don't know if the pop­u­la­tion ap­pre­ci­ates that."