An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Crav­ing a cool down, more Trinida­di­ans are in­stalling air con­di­tion­ing at their homes as hot­ter days are be­ing reg­is­tered.

As a re­sult of this, sev­er­al air con­di­tion­ing com­pa­nies yes­ter­day re­port­ed that they had seen a 20 to 40 per cent in­crease in peo­ple pur­chas­ing units.

Store man­ag­er at Peakes Trad­ing, Keon Mun­gal, told Guardian Me­dia that over the past two weeks, there had been an in­crease in the pur­chase of air con­di­tion­ing units.

Mun­gal said the com­pa­ny al­so ob­served that many pri­ma­ry schools were call­ing to in­stall AC units.

“For the first time, I ob­served that so many schools are call­ing and there are a lot of peo­ple com­ing to buy the units and there has been a 25 to 30 per cent in­crease at our stores. There has al­so been an uptick in per­sons en­quir­ing about the sizes and prices for the units,” Mun­gal ex­plained.

He not­ed that while Peakes had the sup­plies to meet the de­mand, the 36,000 BTU ACs were out of stock at the mo­ment, al­though a new sup­ply should be in by late Oc­to­ber, or ear­ly No­vem­ber.

Mun­gal added that the 12,000, 18,000, and 24,000 BTU units were sell­ing quick­ly.

An of­fi­cial at Courts on Cha­con Street Port-of-Spain said there had been a 35 to 40 per cent in­crease in sales and the 24,000 in­vert­er, which is an en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient unit, was sell­ing the most, as it cooled a room more quick­ly than the 12,000 BTU.

She said there had al­so been an uptick in cus­tomers pur­chas­ing fans.

Mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor of Cole­man air con­di­tion­ing com­pa­ny, Al­lan Julien, said while the com­pa­ny had ex­pe­ri­enced a 20 per cent in­crease in pur­chas­es the past 12 days, more cus­tomers were go­ing for the larg­er units, even for bed­rooms, so that they can deal with the ad­di­tion­al heat.

Julien not­ed that a stan­dard unit, which was a 12,000 BTU, went for $2,900 and a high-ef­fi­cien­cy in­vert­er sold at $4,000.

“We have been able to cope with the de­mand, to a cer­tain ex­tent, but you al­so find with that in­crease, a lot of peo­ple are switch­ing to in­vert­er units be­cause they are us­ing their ACs a lot more, so it is a good call to switch to the in­vert­ers,” Julien out­lined.

Across at West In­di­an Lo­gis­tics Lim­it­ed, chief ex­ec­u­tive An­drew Bridge­mo­hans­ingh said while they had seen an uptick in the AC unit sales, he would not at­tribute it to the cur­rent heat wave the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. He not­ed there had been an in­crease in sales since the be­gin­ning of the year, but over the last two weeks there had been an in­crease in peo­ple ser­vic­ing and re­pair­ing their units.

“We have seen an uptick in spare parts sell­ing more for the last two weeks. The main­te­nance de­part­ment has been busy for the past two weeks, but to say I am at­tribut­ing a spike in sales as a re­sult of the heat wave, no, that is not the case,” Bridge­mo­hans­ingh added.

Con­ti­nen­tal Group of Com­pa­nies man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Neil Ma­habir said there had been a 20 per cent in­crease in sales and a 20 to 30 per cent in­crease in peo­ple re­pair­ing their units.

“I know for sure we have the sup­ply to meet the de­mand, as new stock has just come off the Port of Port-of-Spain, be­cause for the next two weeks, we will be get­ting more calls to in­stall and even ser­vice,” Ma­habir re­vealed.

AC tech­ni­cian Isi­ah Deshong told GML there has been an in­crease in in­stal­la­tion at res­i­den­tial homes. Deshong jok­ing­ly said he hoped the heat wave would last a while longer, as busi­ness had been very good com­pared to COVID-19 times.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er AC tech­ni­cian, who wished not to be named, said al­lo­cat­ing the 12,000 BTU units was now a task. as many of the big sup­pli­ers were hoard­ing. How­ev­er, he did in­di­cate there has been an in­crease in ser­vic­ing and re­pairs of units.

Heat warn­ings, hot spells, and heat­waves have been is­sued in sev­er­al Caribbean is­lands, in­clud­ing T&T.

In An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice said an ex­ces­sive heat ad­vi­so­ry was in ef­fect from 8 am yes­ter­day to 5 pm next Fri­day.

In Grena­da, the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices, in an ad­vi­so­ry on Thurs­day, said an­oth­er heat­wave may po­ten­tial­ly af­fect the is­land as mod­els in­di­cate light winds, high tem­per­a­tures, and low rain­fall for the next three days.

It not­ed tem­per­a­tures have ex­ceed­ed 31.7°C or greater.

Last month, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tri­cal Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) al­so ad­vised that there had been a greater con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty, which it at­trib­uted in part to the use of AC units. The com­pa­ny not­ed that it record­ed its high­est-ever con­sumer elec­tric­i­ty de­mand of 1400.2 megawatts (MW) on Au­gust 24.