The T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS) has launched an en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy light­ing lab (EEL Lab) to pro­vide test­ing ser­vices to en­sure the qual­i­ty of light­ing prod­ucts in the wider Cari­com re­gion, while rais­ing the lev­el of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy aware­ness.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon high­light­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing this coun­try’s car­bon foot­print through the use of greater en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient tech­nol­o­gy, un­der­scor­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of EEL Lab.

“This new En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Light­ing Lab is a pos­i­tive step in this di­rec­tion, through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Test­ing and La­belling Pro­gramme for Com­pact Flu­o­res­cent Light­bulbs (CFLs) and Light Emit­ting Diode Bulbs (LEDs) light­ing prod­ucts,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She added with the EEL Lab­o­ra­to­ry con­sumers will now ben­e­fit from hav­ing ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion to com­pare brands of CFLs and LEDs.

“Busi­ness­es in T&T and the re­gion can al­so have their light­ing prod­ucts test­ed and ver­i­fied lo­cal­ly.

“In the past, light­ing prod­ucts would have to be sent to a coun­try out­side of the re­gion to be test­ed,” the min­is­ter added

In Au­gust 2020, the EEL Lab was com­mis­sioned through the Cari­com Re­gion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Stan­dards and Qual­i­ty (CROSQ) and the Ger­man Metrol­o­gy In­sti­tute, Physikalisch-Tech­nis­che Bun­de­sanstalt (PTB) un­der the “Strength­en­ing of Qual­i­ty for Sus­tain­able En­er­gy in the Caribbean (QSEC) Project.”

In ad­di­tion to Gov­ern­ment fund­ing, the EEL Lab­o­ra­to­ry was fi­nanced through CROSQ (a re­gion­al in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion es­tab­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2002 to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of re­gion­al stan­dards) and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment’s Glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Fund (GEF) Project.

This fund­ing was used to out­fit the lab with up­dat­ed and mod­ern test­ing equip­ment such as an in­te­grat­ing sphere, spec­tropho­tome­ter, pow­er me­ter, lamp test­ing age­ing rack, stan­dard lamp, and AC test­ing pow­er source.