Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) record­ed its high­est-ever con­sumer elec­tric­i­ty de­mand on Mon­day fol­low­ing the re­cent hot weath­er con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to T&TEC’s da­ta, the av­er­age peak de­mand for the last five years is 1,340 megawatts (MW), and while the com­pa­ny record­ed of 1,400.2 MW last Thurs­day, T&TEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Kur­vais Fran­cois, told Guardian Me­dia that it in­creased to 1,410 MW on Mon­day.

As a re­sult, he ad­vised cus­tomers to con­serve elec­tric­i­ty wher­ev­er pos­si­ble as an in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty de­mand means an in­crease in nat­ur­al gas us­age.

“If we fail to con­serve elec­tric­i­ty, the cus­tomer’s bill cer­tain­ly will go up, so that is the most di­rect im­pact on the cus­tomer is that he would see an in­creased bill and he is con­sum­ing ad­di­tion­al kilo­watt-hours … The oth­er con­se­quence is the im­pact on nat­ur­al gas and the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas is a de­plet­ing re­source, and the more en­er­gy we use, in terms of elec­tric­i­ty, is the high­er the nat­ur­al gas us­age,” he said.

In a re­lease, T&TEC not­ed that the com­pa­ny has 2,037 MW in their ca­pac­i­ty, how­ev­er, Fran­cois said al­though they un­der­stand the weath­er con­di­tions are un­bear­able for some, they are still ad­vis­ing cus­tomers to save wher­ev­er they can.

“Once they can con­serve, we ad­vise cus­tomers to do so, but we un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion … The Met Of­fice is say­ing that it’s not a heat wave, it’s heat spells, we’re get­ting high tem­per­a­tures due to a num­ber of fac­tors, in­clud­ing cli­mate change. But ba­si­cal­ly … if you need to use AC, fans, what­ev­er, then cer­tain­ly, cus­tomers should go ahead and use that, we are not telling cus­tomers not to. We keep say­ing that if it is safe to do so, we’d like peo­ple to con­serve, but that is es­sen­tial­ly what the mes­sage is,” he added.

In the re­lease, T&TEC ad­vised the pub­lic to prac­tise elec­tric­i­ty con­ser­va­tion through:

• Rais­ing the tem­per­a­ture on AC 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 per cent).

• Shield­ing the sun by clos­ing win­dow cov­er­ings like blinds and cur­tains to shield the sun’s rays so that the AC unit does not work hard­er to keep the home cool.

• Re­duc­ing wa­ter heat­ing by low­er­ing the tem­per­a­ture on tank wa­ter heaters or turn­ing it off for one or two days; most out­door wa­ter stor­age tanks will be suf­fi­cient­ly heat­ed by the sun. Avoid us­ing hot wa­ter for laun­dry and do­ing dish­es.

• Un­plug­ging ap­pli­ances when not in use to pre­vent en­er­gy wastage. Turn­ing off the ceil­ing fan and/or lights be­fore leav­ing rooms to help low­er en­er­gy us­age. Com­mon en­er­gy wasters in­clude gam­ing con­soles (eg Xbox, PS5), stereo sys­tems, per­son­al com­put­ers and desk­top print­ers, and TVs. If these must re­main plugged in, en­sure they are in en­er­gy-sav­ing mode.

• Us­ing ef­fi­cient light­ing by switch­ing to en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient LEDs, which con­sume sig­nif­i­cant­ly less elec­tric­i­ty and gen­er­ate less heat.

Some took to so­cial me­dia to ex­press their dis­plea­sure with T&TEC’s state­ment.

Niri Ram­nath said: “This is a mad mad place yes ... no wa­ter and now de­crease elec­tric­i­ty? What is re­al­ly work­ing?”

Kath­leen Be­taudi­er said: “While we may some­what un­der­stand the rea­son, hey, we are pay­ing cus­tomers. We don’t owe on pay­ments. This heat is CRAZY! Al­lyuh play­ing mad ah wah?”

Aman­da Ram­bal­ly said: “So we must just dead with heat­stroke cause WASA Trinidad and To­ba­go sure­ly not giv­ing us wa­ter.”

In­sta­gram user, Ti­ta­nia, said, “In oth­er words, dear pub­lic, please suf­fer in this un­com­fort­able heat while we aim to charge you more for your de­creased us­age.”

Ronald Ma­habir said, “There’s a high­er elec­tric­i­ty de­mand be­cause more peo­ple are us­ing air con­di­tion­ing, not for lux­u­ry but to sur­vive the heat.”