KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will re­place Tow­er 68 in Rousil­lac, which broke and caused last week’s is­land­wide pow­er out­age.How­ev­er, T&TEC chair­man Rom­ney Thomas says the pow­er grid is now sta­ble af­ter crews trans­ferred one of the 220 kV cir­cuits from the bro­ken trans­mis­sion tow­er on­to al­ter­na­tive util­i­ty poles on Sun­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Thomas said it was al­ways T&TEC’s in­ten­tion to re­lo­cate Tow­er 68.

He said a con­trac­tor be­gan con­struct­ing a new 220kV dou­ble cir­cuit tow­er line in March 2021, with an orig­i­nal com­ple­tion date next month. How­ev­er, de­lays shift­ed the com­ple­tion date to Jan­u­ary 2023.

“The area is cur­rent­ly sta­ble but we are con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing it. That tow­er was al­ways card­ed to move to a more sta­ble lo­ca­tion. We al­ways con­tem­plat­ed this and that was part of a con­tract to con­struct a new 220kV dou­ble-cir­cuit. That con­tract is cur­rent­ly un­der­way,” Thomas said.

Last Tues­day, land move­ment around Tow­er 68 caused the top of the struc­ture to col­lapse, caus­ing an out­age that left 30 per cent of Trinidad with­out pow­er for most of the night.

Tow­er 68 was part of the grid that trans­ferred pow­er out of the Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed plant in La Brea to T&TEC in­stal­la­tions across the is­land be­fore reach­ing cus­tomers. T&TEC’s oth­er in­de­pen­dent pow­er providers in­creased their out­put to serve af­fect­ed cus­tomers.

The pow­er out­age al­so im­pact­ed sev­er­al of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty’s plants across the is­land, leav­ing many homes and busi­ness­es with­out a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply.