Ryan Ba­choo

As Trin­bag­o­ni­ans come to grips with sev­er­al hot spells, the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has seen a surge in de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty.

The Com­mis­sion said on Thurs­day it record­ed "con­tin­u­ous in­creas­es" in elec­tric­i­ty de­mand over the past two weeks, as pre­vi­ous peaks were ex­ceed­ed on five oc­ca­sions.

On Sep­tem­ber 13, 2023 TTEC record­ed its then high­est ever con­sumer elec­tric­i­ty de­mand of 1410 megawatts (MW). How­ev­er, the month of May this year has proven to be the high­est thus far, with peak de­mands of 1422 MW on May 2, 1447.1 MW on May 6, 1448 MW on May 7, 1455.8 MW on May 13 and 1456.2 MW on May 15.

T&TEC al­lud­ed to the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice's (MET Ser­vice) an­nounce­ment that for the sec­ond quar­ter of the year, “day and night tem­per­a­tures are pre­dict­ed to be above av­er­age for most of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with high (70%) prob­a­bil­i­ties for short-du­ra­tion hot spells from April to June.”

While T&TEC says it has more than enough in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty (2037MW) to meet the surge in de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty, the in­creased de­mand has re­sult­ed in in­creased nat­ur­al gas us­age. "Prac­tic­ing con­ser­va­tion, once safe to do so, will there­fore help to re­duce the im­pact on the avail­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas," the state­ment said.

The body al­so re­leased sev­er­al tips to man­age elec­tric­i­ty us­age as tem­per­a­tures soar:

1. Raise the tem­per­a­ture on air con­di­tion­ing units by a few de­grees to min­imise the load and use fans to main­tain com­fort (every de­gree of cool­ing in­creas­es en­er­gy use by six to eight per­cent).

2. Shield the sun. Close win­dow cov­er­ings like blinds and cur­tains to shield the sun’s rays so that your air con­di­tion­ing unit does not work hard­er to keep your home cool.

3. Re­duce wa­ter heat­ing. Low­er the tem­per­a­ture on the ther­mo­stat on your tank wa­ter heater; or turn it off in­ter­mit­tent­ly; most out­door wa­ter stor­age tanks will be suf­fi­cient­ly heat­ed by the sun on very hot days. Avoid us­ing hot wa­ter for laun­dry and do­ing dish­es.

4. Un­plug ap­pli­ances when not in use to pre­vent en­er­gy wastage. Turn­ing off the ceil­ing fan and/or lights be­fore leav­ing a room for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods can help low­er your en­er­gy us­age. Ef­fi­cient Light­ing. Switch to en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient LEDs, which con­sume sig­nif­i­cant­ly less elec­tric­i­ty and gen­er­ate less heat.