The command: “Eyes right!”
As thousands passed the four giant towers at the PowerGen site on Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, this past weekend, they would have turned to see the monumental figures lit up in green, purple, blue and red.
It was a Trooping of the Colours of sorts, to say farewell to the militant generals nicknamed ‘The Silver Sentinels’ that have overlooked the city since 1961.
This year, at the age of 60, they’re being retired and the PowerGen staff gave the public one more chance to salute them while they stand for their last few days.
PowerGen’s deconstruction of these city icons comes five years after the power generating plant was decommissioned on January 14, 2016, as the company shifted its electricity supply to two plants at Point Lisas and Penal.
From June last year, the company began taking the Port-of-Spain plant apart. The site will make room for newly-constructed commercial, retail and housing properties as part of the city’s redevelopment plans.
The focus brought to the site now has raised the question: Can we preserve some of this history by securing a space on the property for a museum of electricity in T&T?’
The sentinels themselves are less than half the age of the power plant that’s been on that compound for 126 years. T&T’s electricity history is worth shedding light upon.
The history of electricity in T&T began through Edgar Tripp, who founded the Electric Light and Power Company in 1894. One year later, in 1895, the first electric lights were installed in the original Queen’s Park Hotel, where the present bpTT headquarters is located, on Queen’s Park West, and also in the Princes’ Building, which was located on the National Academy for Performing Arts (NAPA) site.
The Wrightson Road site became the source of T&T’s main power generation in December 1896, when a group of local businessmen received permission to build an electric power station and tram network there, for 20 years.
By 1901, however, the company was sold to Canadian businessmen and the Trinidad Electric Company Limited was formed. The name was later changed to the T&T Electricity Company (T&TEC), which operated the Wrighton Road plant until PowerGen was established on December 23, 1994, a joint venture created from the partial divestment of T&TEC.
Within the site resided a wealth of historical artefacts, documents and apparatus before the decommissioning began. Among them, computer control panels and equipment dating back decades, signage and logos of old industrial equipment manufacturers, including the Babcock & Wilcox Company, established in 1867, and Parsons and Company Limited founded in 1889.
Guided tours of the facility have never been possible because of the inherent risks and students have hardly been exposed to books that speak of the history of electricity in T&T. What better time to start, than now?
The loud fizzing sounds of the sentinels and thunderous hums of the equipment will never be heard again but their significance must be given a lasting voice. It is in this light, we strongly suggest steps be taken to power generations to come with knowledge of what the site represents by creating a museum of electricity.