KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Two and a half years af­ter Gov­ern­ment be­gan dis­trib­ut­ing free LED light­bulbs to house­holds, the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) says hun­dreds of thou­sands of cus­tomers are sav­ing $13 bi­month­ly for every four bulbs in use.

In 2020, T&TEC pur­chased 1.6 mil­lion LED light­bulbs from No­va Light­ing for $8.8 mil­lion fol­low­ing a pub­lic ten­der. Dis­tri­b­u­tion start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2020 and T&TEC said it is near­ing the end of the pro­gramme, hav­ing dis­trib­uted 1,597,435 bulbs to 399,200 ac­count hold­ers up to April 20. Cus­tomers col­lect bulbs when they pay their bills at ser­vice cen­tres or by ap­point­ment.

The LED bulb dis­tri­b­u­tion was a fea­ture of the 2019/2020 Na­tion­al Bud­get when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the launch of a ma­jor pro­gramme to re­place all in­can­des­cent bulbs cur­rent­ly used in 400,000 house­holds in T&T with mod­ern en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient LED light­bulbs. He said the Gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive was free of charge as a pub­lic ser­vice and a boost to en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion. 

It was an en­deav­our En­er­gy Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver de­scribed as sen­si­ble as many coun­tries had im­ple­ment­ed it with good ef­fect. Dri­ver said light­ing is a ma­jor use of elec­tric­i­ty in the com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial build­ing sec­tors along with air con­di­tion­ing. Swap­ping out in­can­des­cent and com­pact flu­o­res­cent bulbs for LEDs is an easy, cost-ef­fec­tive method for re­duc­ing en­er­gy use and elec­tric­i­ty bills.

T&TEC Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook said the pro­gramme was an ex­cel­lent ini­tia­tive that brought sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings to the coun­try and cus­tomers. He said dis­tri­b­u­tion was a start­ing point where cus­tomers ini­tial­ly got four, then eight light­bulbs to ex­pe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of hav­ing them in their homes. T&TEC is en­cour­ag­ing cus­tomers to get LED light­bulbs for the rest of their home in­stal­la­tions. 

“I think that we should re­al­ly, through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, be mov­ing heav­i­ly away from in­can­des­cent light­ing and con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise the op­tion of go­ing with LED bulbs be­cause of the sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings on the gas which can be used oth­er­wise by the coun­try to cre­ate more ben­e­fits for the res­i­dents,” Ram­sook said.

He said an analy­sis shows that for a two-month billing pe­ri­od un­der the cur­rent rate, a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer saves $13 with four LED light­bulbs in­stalled as it re­duces the over­all kilo­watt/hour con­sump­tion rate.

With a po­ten­tial rate hike pend­ing, Ram­sook said the pow­er is at cus­tomers’ fin­ger­tips to use more cost-ef­fi­cient light­ing meth­ods, in­clud­ing turn­ing off lights that are not in use.

“My opin­ion is that no home should car­ry in­can­des­cent bulbs any­more. Trans­fer to the LED bulbs. They are go­ing to cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings for you,” he ad­vised.

LED light bulbs cost more than reg­u­lar com­pact flu­o­res­cent light­ing (CFL) bulbs, but Ram­sook said cus­tomers should work out the sav­ings by com­par­ing the re­duced kilo­watt/hour cost to the price of an LED light­bulb. An LED light­bulb al­so lasts longer than oth­ers, up to ten years. How­ev­er, Ram­sook said it is not the best for re­cessed light­ing be­cause of the heat gen­er­at­ed.

Switch­ing from in­can­des­cent bulbs to LEDs us­es 85 per cent less en­er­gy. LEDs al­so use up to 30 per cent less en­er­gy than CFLs and last longer than CFLs and in­can­des­cent bulbs. Be­cause they use less en­er­gy to pro­vide the same il­lu­mi­na­tion, they save mon­ey on elec­tric­i­ty bills.