Melis­sa Doughty

Ar­eas such as St, Ann's Bel­mont, Mar­aval and Mu­cu­rapo will get an im­proved pow­er sup­ply af­ter the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) yes­ter­day com­mis­sioned a $184 mil­lion 132/33kv (kilo­volt) gate­way sub­sta­tion as part of its ef­forts to pro­vide more re­li­able ser­vice to res­i­dents in north Trinidad.

T&TEC gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook said one trans­former has been en­er­gised al­though the sub­sta­tion is not yet ful­ly func­tion­ing and work is still to be done on the un­der­ground in­fra­struc­ture on Wright­son Road but the en­tire process to be com­plet­ed by year's end.Al­though geared specif­i­cal­ly to­ward the north­ern part of the coun­try, T&TEC's' new­ly reap­point­ed chair­man Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark said oth­er ini­tia­tives are in the works to bring a re­li­able elec­tri­cal sup­ply to cit­i­zens through­out the coun­try.

Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing yes­ter­day at the North­ern Area Sports Club, Fla­ment St, Port-of-Spain, Ramkissoon-Mark hailed the de­vel­op­ment as a new era in elec­tri­cal gen­er­a­tion. The sub­sta­tion is one of 30 the com­mis­sion plans to up­grade or build.She said the sta­tion was en­er­gised two weeks ago sig­nal­ing "the dawn of a new era of elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply in T&T."

"This is the cul­mi­na­tion of a tremen­dous amount of plan­ning, $184 mil­lion in cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and thou­sands of man hours from the men and women who con­tributed to this project," she said.Ramkissoon-Mark re­called of the pow­er out­ages ex­pe­ri­enced by cus­tomers, most mem­o­rably the Good Fri­day na­tion­wide black­out.

She said the ca­pac­i­ty at the Port-of-Spain B pow­er sta­tion is 308 megawatts with ful­ly func­tion­ing ma­chines. The old sta­tion pro­vides an out­put of 120-150 megawatts of pow­er and Port-of-Spain con­sumes more than 250 mega watts of pow­er, so 130 mega watts has to be im­port­ed from a sub­sta­tion out­side of the city. She said while that was ap­pro­pri­ate giv­en T&T's size as a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, there is needs for a prop­er trans­mis­sion net­work and in­fra­struc­ture.

"Pri­or to the gate­way, the trans­mis­sion grid was un­able to meet the de­mands of Port-of-Spain when­ev­er there was a dou­ble con­tin­gency con­di­tion, or a fail­ure of plant and equip­ment at the Port-of-Spain B sta­tion."Ramkissoon-Mark said for the first time T&T's north-west has ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and in the event of a shut down of the B pow­er sta­tion, T&TEC will be able to rapid­ly re­cov­er and main­tain sup­ply to the city.

She apol­o­gised to cus­tomers in Diego Mar­tin, Mar­aval and oth­ers ar­eas and said the com­mis­sion is mind­ful of the need for "im­proved avail­abil­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty."

She al­so an­nounced that to im­prove in­fra­struc­ture, T&TEC has moved to "ac­quire land from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to cater for the ex­pan­sion of the West­moor­ings sub­sta­tion." Sev­er­al oth­er ini­tia­tives will be im­ple­ment­ed to im­prove re­li­a­bil­i­ty such as a new cus­tomer web ser­vice to al­low for on­line pay­ments, a build­ing for the St James Cen­tre, ac­qui­si­tion of 60 ve­hi­cles for less break­down and more crews, more tree trim­ming crews, re­new­able en­er­gy projects with UTT, O'Meara and ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, she added.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh said the com­mis­sion­ing of the sub­sta­tion is part of gov­ern­ment's larg­er de­vel­op­men­tal plan "aimed at pro­pelling T&T's elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor in­to the 21 cen­tu­ry."He said two sim­i­lar projects will be im­ple­ment­ed bring­ing ex­cess pow­er from the Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) pow­er plant at La Brea and the West­moor­ings clus­ter which will "in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty to the West­ern penin­su­la."

"These three projects will al­low the sys­tem to re­spond to sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in the de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty, while im­prov­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the ser­vice pro­vid­ed," he said.Baksh said work is be­ing done on more than 30 sta­tions through­out the coun­try."Some of these sub­sta­tions are be­ing up­grad­ed, while oth­ers are be­ing con­struct­ed," he said.