Kalain Ho­sein

Sev­er­al parts of Trinidad were left with­out elec­tric­i­ty for sev­er­al hours last night, af­ter the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) was hit by an­oth­er black­out.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia soon af­ter cus­tomers be­gan com­plain­ing about pow­er out­ages across the is­land around 7.35 pm, T&TEC gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook con­firmed that 30 per cent the is­land had no elec­tric­i­ty.

Ram­sook ex­plained that was an is­sue with one of the tow­ers that sup­plies the Union-Ghan­di line in south Trinidad but as­sured they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

At that time, there were re­ports of out­ages in Curepe, Diego Mar­tin, Pe­nal, Ma­coya, Mal­abar, Chin Chin and Pi­paro.

Ram­sook said pow­er should have been re­stored with­in a few min­utes in most places but as late as 10 pm in oth­ers.

How­ev­er, in an up­date a few hours lat­er, at 9 pm, T&TEC said the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply was ex­pect­ed to be re­stored in two and a half hours across Trinidad.

Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Annabelle Bras­nell ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that the oth­er in­de­pen­dent pow­er providers (IPPs) were pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to serve the cus­tomers who were cur­rent­ly af­fect­ed by the out­age, lead­ing to a restora­tion of sup­ply.

She added, “How­ev­er, we should note that with­in the ear­ly morn­ing, when the de­mand again in­creas­es and cus­tomers are us­ing more elec­tric­i­ty, we an­tic­i­pate that we may need to in­sti­tute load shed­ding once again to man­age the avail­able elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply.”

T&TEC is ask­ing cus­tomers to con­serve elec­tric­i­ty and re­duce the us­age of ap­pli­ances that re­quire large ca­pac­i­ties, such as air con­di­tion­ing units and wa­ter heaters, as it will as­sist in man­ag­ing the load.

At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.30 pm yes­ter­day, many ar­eas across Trinidad lost pow­er sup­ply.

T&TEC sub­se­quent­ly in­di­cat­ed that due to a land­slide at Grant Trace, Rousil­lac, a 220-kilo­volt trans­mis­sion tow­er that trans­mits pow­er from the Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) plant in La Brea to the rest of the grid fell, leav­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of cus­tomers out of sup­ply. T&TEC im­me­di­ate­ly im­ple­ment­ed rolling load shed­ding while en­gi­neers as­sessed the sit­u­a­tion.

The Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed is Trinidad’s largest pow­er gen­er­a­tion plant.

Ten days ago, on Au­gust 6, thou­sands of cus­tomers al­so lost pow­er across Trinidad due to a pow­er gen­er­a­tion is­sue, with T&TEC restor­ing sup­ply with­in four hours.

WASA last night al­so said the pow­er fail­ure had im­pact­ed sev­er­al of its plants across the coun­try.