SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Start­ing to­day, if you go in­to a T&TEC ser­vice cen­tre to pay your elec­tric­i­ty bill, you will be able to col­lect your four free LED bulbs, as promised to the pop­u­la­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the last bud­get.

The long-await­ed an­nounce­ment on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the bulbs came yes­ter­day from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and the chair­man of T&TEC, Kei­th Sir­ju.

Both were speak­ing at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence held.

Gon­za­les said the dis­tri­b­u­tion is the Gov­ern­ment’s first step in its mul­ti-pronged and mul­ti-tiered strat­e­gy for im­ple­men­ta­tion of en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy prac­tices.

“The bulbs, which were sup­plied by No­va Light­ing Trinidad and man­u­fac­tured by Emit­ter En­er­gy Inc, cost tax­pay­ers a to­tal of $8.8 mil­lion and their dis­tri­b­u­tion will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by T&TEC,” Gon­za­les said.

He de­scribed the bulbs as an open­ing sal­vo, say­ing they are proof the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous in pur­su­ing this route to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

You can col­lect your bulbs when you pay your elec­tric­i­ty bill at a T&TEC ser­vice cen­tre. You must pro­vide proof of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to col­lect. If you do not pay your bills in per­son and utilise any of the oth­er bill pay­ment op­tions, you can pay your bill as usu­al and vis­it the T&TEC web­site to book an ap­point­ment to col­lect your bulbs.

Gon­za­les said the Min­istry is al­so un­der­tak­ing an au­dit of en­er­gy use at Gov­ern­ment build­ings.

He said a pi­lot project was al­ready done at Tow­er C of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, which re­vealed that by just turn­ing off lights in the build­ing at night, the State can save $350,000 a year.

“If ful­ly em­braced by the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, as it must be, our En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy Plan will lead to $1.2 bil­lion in en­er­gy cost sav­ings over the next five years and $2.72 bil­lion by 2030.”

Gon­za­les said cut­ting down in en­er­gy use will al­so have a pos­i­tive im­pact on this coun­try’s car­bon emis­sions, which are among the high­est in the world, with a re­duc­tion of about six mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions over the next five years. He said by 2030, those emis­sions would be re­duced by 18 mil­lion tonnes.

“We are ful­ly aware that se­cur­ing these ben­e­fits re­quires a turn-around in the ways in which we use elec­tric­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The truth is that we, the con­sumers, do not bear the full cost of the elec­tric­i­ty that keeps our lights on and our ap­pli­ances run­ning,” he said.

Gon­za­les said the av­er­age ac­count hold­er en­joys an 80 per cent sub­sidy on their bills be­cause T&TEC pays less for nat­ur­al gas and the full pro­duc­tion cost is not passed on to cus­tomers.

“This, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has led to a very cav­a­lier and ‘en­ti­tled’ ap­proach to our elec­tric­i­ty us­age, and that is some­thing that we must change if we are to reap the ben­e­fits that I men­tioned ear­li­er,” he said.

The Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is al­so im­ple­ment­ing a num­ber of con­struc­tion projects to in­stall so­lar gen­er­a­tors across the coun­try.

“These in­clude the con­struc­tion of a 1.4-megawatt al­ter­nat­ing cur­rent (MWac) So­lar Gen­er­a­tor at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, the con­struc­tion of a Util­i­ty-Scale So­lar Project that con­sists of two So­lar Pho­to Volta­ic Plants: one at Brechin Cas­tle and the oth­er at Trinci­ty, the con­struc­tion of a So­lar Pho­to­volta­ic project at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, con­sist­ing of a 700 kilo­watts peak (kWp) so­lar pho­to­volta­ic car­port, two 50 kilo­watts (kW) Lev­el 3 Charg­ers, and three LED un­der-car­port light­ing sys­tems.” He said the con­struc­tion of the so­lar pho­to­volta­ic plants will be­gin in the lat­ter half of 2021 and the con­tracts to build them were award­ed in Feb­ru­ary to the con­sor­tium of BP, Shell and Light­Source BP.

Gon­za­les con­grat­u­lat­ed T&TEC on their new project, an En­er­gy Man­age­ment Ap­pli­ca­tion.

T&TEC chair­man, Kei­th Sir­ju said the ap­pli­ca­tion will al­low reg­is­tered ac­count hold­ers to track their en­er­gy con­sump­tion and much more. Those ac­count hold­ers who have al­ready signed up for the Com­mis­sion’s e-bills will be able to ac­cess the ap­pli­ca­tion by log­ging on­to T&TEC’s web­site. New users can reg­is­ter their ac­counts on­line to ac­cess the ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Ac­count hold­ers will be able to, at their con­ve­nience, set goals for us­age or bill to­tal, mon­i­tor their us­age habits and use a cal­cu­la­tor to es­ti­mate the elec­tric­i­ty con­sumed by their spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ances. It al­so pro­vides an an­i­mat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the lev­el of car­bon emis­sions a cus­tomer gen­er­ates, to bet­ter in­form you about green­house gas­es and how these re­late to items used in every­day life,” Sir­ju said.

Sir­ju said cus­tomers can save ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 a billing cy­cle by re­plac­ing four 60 watt in­can­des­cent bulbs with LEDs. He said LED bulbs al­so have a much longer life span- 15,000 hours- com­pared to the 1,000 hour-life spans of an in­can­des­cent bulb.

Sir­ju said LED bulbs al­so re­duce car­bon emis­sions by as much as 17 per cent.