The questions to be asked following Wednesday’s island-wide electricity outage that left more than a million people without power for several hours cannot be limited to the cause and who is to blame.
What about the failure to meet a target set in 2015 for ten per cent of the country’s power generation to come from renewables by 2021? Had that target been met, bringing about some much-needed decentralization of T&T’s power generating infrastructure, citizens would not be now counting the huge losses from Wednesday’s catastrophic event.
The need to assess the country’s renewable energy potential takes on more urgency now that a significant vulnerability has been exposed by that outage which lasted for up to 12 hours in some areas and knocked out water supply and telecommunications services in many parts of the island.
The fact that T&T is yet to take significant steps in the direction of renewable energy means that a key promise made by the Keith Rowley administration remains unfulfilled. The renewable energy target was announced by Finance Minister Colm Imbert in his October 2015 budget presentation. He said it was high on the government’s agenda and at the time it did not seem to be an overly ambitious aspiration.
However, more than six years later, T&T is way behind many of its Caricom counterparts since only baby steps have been taken in the direction of renewable energy. There are pilot projects—2-kilowatt (kW) off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems installed at the University of T&T (UTT) and T&TEC’s Mt. Hope compound and 21 1-kW PV systems at schools across the country—but not much else.
That leaves consumers subject to the vagaries of an electricity infrastructure that is limited to the supply arrangements between the T&T Electricity Commission (T&TEC) and three independent producers. Powergen controls 1,386 megawatts (MW) of gas-fired capacity across three facilities, while Trinidad Generation Unlimited operates a 720-MW natural gas combined cycle power plant and Trinity Power Limited has a 225-MW simple-cycle natural gas plant.
A separate electricity generation arrangement is in place for Tobago.
There has been a level of complacency about that less-than-perfect electricity arrangement because consumers here enjoy the lowest energy costs in the region. However, this week’s major disruption should wake up this nation to the importance of shifting to an arrangement that provides greater reliability, and consistency of service.
Some effort is needed to get T&T back on track to achieve the objective of integrating renewable energy into the local electricity grid.
The T&TEC Act, Chapter 54:70 and Regulated Industries Commission Act, Chapter 54:73 can be amended to allow for renewable energy production by independent power producers and investments made in the development and establishment of efficient renewable energy infrastructure.
Naturally occurring features of our twin tropical islands can make the switch to renewable power attainable as we have two key sources in abundance—sun and wind.
It is also a climate change goal that needs to be achieved sooner rather than later.
However, after the events of this week, the greatest motivation should be moving away from a system that exposes the high cost of T&T’s low electricity rates.
