The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) En­gi­neers pro­posed ways of sav­ing en­er­gy and fi­nan­cial re­sources in the light of the cur­rent cli­mate change con­ver­sa­tions. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from T&TEC:

A re­mote light­ing sys­tem so­lu­tion for recre­ation grounds to save en­er­gy and mon­ey; con­sid­er­a­tions on the im­pact of ex­treme weath­er on T&TEC’s in­fra­struc­ture; and a new call cen­tre to im­prove tele­phone cus­tomer ser­vice were some of the so­lu­tions ex­am­ined re­cent­ly by En­gi­neers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) at its in­au­gur­al En­gi­neer­ing Con­fer­ence. The con­fer­ence ran from Oc­to­ber 20th-22nd and was themed “Over Fre­quen­cy, a Sym­po­sium of Ex­cep­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing”. While not a cli­mate change fo­rum, so­lu­tions that would con­tribute to achiev­ing T&T’s cli­mate change goals were key top­ics on the agen­da.

It was staged to show­case in-house en­gi­neer­ing in­no­va­tions and to dis­cuss ideas on op­er­a­tional mat­ters. Over 16 En­gi­neers pre­sent­ed so­lu­tions, sev­er­al al­ready in-train or ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and ser­vice de­liv­ery in ar­eas like tele­phone cus­tomer ser­vice and re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

The Con­fer­ence was or­gan­ised for vir­tu­al and lim­it­ed in-per­son at­ten­dance and opened with wel­come re­marks from T&TEC’s Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer, Chrisalton Belle and from Mem­ber of the Com­mis­sion, Solange De Souza. Mr. Belle re­mind­ed En­gi­neers of their role as the core of T&TEC’s op­er­a­tions, say­ing, “we must be ex­cep­tion­al and pro­duce work of the high­est qual­i­ty.” While al­so ac­knowl­edg­ing the sup­port­ive role of oth­er mem­bers of staff, he said he was proud of the fine work pro­duced and hoped it can pos­i­tive­ly im­pact on the prod­uct T&TEC de­liv­ers. Ms. De Souza, who is al­so Chair­per­son of the Board’s Sub-Com­mit­tee on Per­for­mance, Re­li­a­bil­i­ty and Rur­al Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and Pub­lic Light­ing, said that the Con­fer­ence gives “the op­por­tu­ni­ty for our En­gi­neers to share ideas, in­no­va­tions and suc­cess­es…and en­gage in dis­cus­sion on the evo­lu­tion of en­gi­neer­ing prac­tices.” As she ac­knowl­edged the strides the or­gan­i­sa­tion made over its 75-year his­to­ry, she not­ed that as pro­fes­sion­als, “we have the pow­er to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment which can ei­ther re­flect im­pec­ca­ble prin­ci­ples or mir­ror dis­re­pute, dis­hon­our or even shame.” Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Kelvin Ram­sook, ad­dressed em­ploy­ees on the fi­nal day of the con­fer­ence and cau­tioned that “what­ev­er we do, this must not just be a con­fer­ence where we present pa­pers. We must ap­ply the en­gi­neer­ing to bet­ter the ser­vice to our cus­tomers.” He not­ed that the ap­petite of the cus­tomer is al­ways chang­ing, with in­creas­ing de­mands every day and, “we have to be al­ways mind­ful of their needs”.

Among a num­ber of pre­sen­ta­tions ad­dress­ing mat­ters re­lat­ed to cli­mate change, En­gi­neers Saidah Ho­sein and Alden Hen­ry ad­dressed the is­sue of con­ser­va­tion of elec­tric­i­ty on un­der­used recre­ation grounds across the coun­try, putting for­ward a pro­pos­al that has the po­ten­tial to re­duce our car­bon foot­print by sav­ing 8,660 megawatt hours of wast­ed en­er­gy an­nu­al­ly.

While all grounds have an au­to­mat­ic timer which op­er­ates from 6:00 p.m. to9:30 p.m., un­der­util­i­sa­tion wastes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 46% of the en­er­gy con­sumed at such fa­cil­i­ties. A new sys­tem, al­ready be­ing pi­lot­ed at the St. Mary’s Recre­ation Ground, Freeport, will al­low for re­mote mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of the flood­lights at 200 recre­ation grounds. Us­ing field de­vices and24-hour sur­veil­lance and com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment, op­er­a­tors at a Con­trol Cen­tre will mon­i­tor the pres­ence of peo­ple and turn the lights on and off or ad­just the light in­ten­si­ty as re­quired. The sys­tem is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­crease the lifes­pan of flood­lights, re­duce main­te­nance costs and pro­tect against van­dal­ism, where per­sons may have bro­ken in­to switch rooms to over­ride the timer sys­tems.

Civ­il En­gi­neer at­tached to the Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing and Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment De­part­ment, Praim Sookdeo, con­sid­ered the im­pact of ex­treme weath­er, caused by cli­mate change, on T&TEC’s in­fra­struc­ture. His pa­per was pre­sent­ed by col­league Valmi­ki Seep­aul, al­so of the same de­part­ment. The case study, “Eval­u­at­ing ex­ist­ing trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture to code re­quire­ments— struc­tur­al con­sid­er­a­tions in­clud­ing cli­mate change”, em­ployed a struc­tur­al analy­sis of ex­ist­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion steel and pre-stressed con­crete util­i­ty poles, as well as trans­mis­sion tow­ers, to de­ter­mine any fail­ure points and the im­pact of in­creas­ing lev­els of wind pres­sures on T&TEC’s ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture. The study cit­ed pre­vi­ous re­search that pro­ject­ed a 30%in­crease in the num­ber of ma­jor hur­ri­canes in the re­gion, with a con­comi­tant in­crease (be­tween 12%-44%) in the de­sign wind pres­sure on T&TEC’s trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture. De­sign wind pres­sure refers the amount of force (“wind load”) that the struc­ture is de­signed to with­stand. The case stud­ies pro­vid­ed de­sign and retro­fitting tech­niques and con­sid­er­a­tions, sev­er­al of which have been adopt­ed. It al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of car­ry­ing out fre­quent in­fra­struc­ture in­spec­tions to de­ter­mine main­te­nance regimes and to en­sure that T&TEC’s in­fra­struc­ture is con­struct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the lat­est en­gi­neer­ing codes.

The three-day con­fer­ence stim­u­lat­ed en­gag­ing dis­cus­sion on var­i­ous as­pects of elec­tri­cal and civ­il en­gi­neer­ing. Some top­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tions in­clud­ed the se­cu­ri­ty of T&TEC’s com­put­er mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol sys­tem; pro­pos­als to trans­form To­ba­go’s sub-trans­mis­sion sys­tem in the long term and fur­ther ex­pan­sion of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion on the is­land; and mea­sures, some al­ready im­ple­ment­ed, to im­prove the elec­tric­i­ty re­li­a­bil­i­ty in Matelot. En­gi­neer-in Train­ing, Jabari Seaforth who in­vent­ed a re­mote cir­cuit break­er switch­ing de­vice in­tend­ed to im­prove the safe­ty of em­ploy­ees, al­so demon­strat­ed the pro­to­type.

As it re­lat­ed to cus­tomer ser­vice de­liv­ery, Kurt Nar­ine of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment pre­sent­ed the Mi­tel Mi Con­tact Con­tact Cen­tre so­lu­tion, a dig­i­tal sys­tem to ef­fi­cient­ly han­dle tele­phone calls. The sys­tem is al­ready par­tial­ly de­ployed at T&TEC’s call cen­tre and al­lowed the Com­mis­sion to dis­con­tin­ue out­sourc­ing its 800-TTEC tele­phone ser­vice in Jan­u­ary. It in­te­grates with the pre-ex­ist­ing 800-BULB sys­tem and, over­all, pro­vides in­tel­li­gent rout­ing and queu­ing of calls to re­duce the num­ber of blocked calls and pro­vides au­to mat­e­dreports and up­dates to cus­tomers on gen­er­al and spe­cif­ic out­ages. Fur­ther Con­tact Cen­tre im­prove­ments will al­low cus­tomers to con­tact any T&TEC of­fice via one com­mon num­ber and will al­so in­clude email and web-chat fa­cil­i­ties.

The con­fer­ence closed with a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the evo­lu­tion of en­gi­neer­ing prac­tice from the 1980s to to­day, mod­er­at­ed by Man­ag­er, Sys­tem Con­trol &Gen­er­a­tion In­ter­face, John Colthrust, with vet­er­an en­gi­neer En­gi­neer­ing Con­troller, Ravi Shuk­la and re­tired Se­nior Su­per­vi­sor, Ash­ton Ban­doo and younger En­gi­neers Mar­cus Choo Ying, and Viren Ram­rek­ers­ingh.