Renu­ka Singh

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is pro­ject­ing a 60 per cent loss in rev­enue as the re­stric­tions in place for COVID-19 con­tin­ue.To mit­i­gate fur­ther loss­es, the com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to re-open its own pay­ment cen­tres soon in or­der to al­low cus­tomers to pay their bills.

This was the word from T&TEC’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Annabelle Bras­nell yes­ter­day, as she said the drop in rev­enue was as a re­sult of a com­bi­na­tion of the busi­ness shut­downs and re­duced col­lec­tions.
“It is pro­ject­ed that at the end of April, we would have had a 20 per cent re­duc­tion in rev­enue be­cause of the re­duced con­sump­tion and a 40 per cent re­duc­tion based on col­lec­tions, a to­tal of 60 per cent re­duc­tion in our col­lec­tions,” Bras­nell said.

How­ev­er, she was un­able to put a dol­lar val­ue to the drop in rev­enue.
“I am un­able to share that da­ta at this time. How­ev­er, 60 per cent is a sub­stan­tial amount,” she said.
Bras­nell said cus­tomers have al­so been ask­ing about the re­open­ing of pay­ment cen­tres.
“We wish to fa­cil­i­tate those cus­tomers. In or­der to do so safe­ly we are cur­rent­ly do­ing ad­di­tion­al in­fra­struc­tur­al mod­i­fi­ca­tions at the ser­vice cen­tres,” she said.

She said the ad­di­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture in the pay­ment cen­tres will help lim­it con­tact be­tween the cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees.
De­spite re­ports of out­ages in ar­eas through­out the coun­try, Bras­nell as­sured that T&TEC was not en­gag­ing in load-shed­ding.
“While more peo­ple are home, the con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty is ac­tu­al­ly down,” she said.
“This is be­cause most busi­ness places are closed. There­fore, the ques­tion of ex­tra us­age does not ap­ply, nei­ther does the ques­tion of load-shed­ding due to in­suf­fi­cient ca­pac­i­ty.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we do not have a short­age of gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty to meet the cur­rent de­mand. All pow­er pro­duc­ers have con­firmed in writ­ing that they have ac­ti­vat­ed all ac­tion plans to pro­vide nec­es­sary ca­pac­i­ty to the com­mis­sion.”

The com­pa­ny has main­tained its call-out crew ro­ta­tion to en­sure that cus­tomers are not out of ser­vice for long, she said.
“Crews are work­ing as nor­mal in all ar­eas, re­spond­ing to emer­gen­cies and com­plet­ing crit­i­cal work re­quired to keep the grid sta­ble,” Bras­nell said.
She said T&TEC, due to the pan­dem­ic, has ceased all non-crit­i­cal main­te­nance jobs.

“How­ev­er, from time to time we may have to sched­ule tem­po­rary in­ter­rup­tions for ur­gent re­pairs and main­te­nance,” she said.