Guardian ( Trinidad and Tobago )
22 November 2023 ( Page 8 )
T&TEC hopes customers reduce electricity use during TGU shutdown
KALAIN HOSEIN - REPORTER KALAIN.HOSEIN@GUARDIAN.CO.TT
T&TEC general manager Curvis Francois hopes customers will reduce their
electricity load from Saturday night into Sunday morning when Trinidad’s
largest power generation plant will be temporarily offline for critical
upgrade works.
“Any form of conservation that customers could practice during that
period would be good,” he said.
The shutdown is expected to take place between 10 pm Saturday and 9 am
Sunday, a period with low electricity load across Trinidad. Francois hopes
customers will reduce their use of high-energy-consuming appliances.
“The biggest use would be air conditioning load, and we would hope that
customers would probably cut back, turning it on at night and come off in
the wee hours of the morning,” he said.
Allaying fears of a repeat of the February 2022 blackout in which the power
grid experienced a catastrophic failure precipitated by a falling tree branch
on a high-voltage circuit, Francois said, “I’d like to say that there is a very
low likelihood of a blackout occurring or any kind of nationwide blackout
occurring as a result of the TGU shutdown.”
Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) produces approximately 50 per cent
of Trinidad’s electricity.
When that plant is taken offline on Saturday night, power from two other
independent power generators, Trinity Power and PowerGen, will make up
the shortfall.
The T&TEC general manager said both plants will be sufficient to cover the
load, but if one of the units at either plant suffers an issue or is overloaded,
load shedding might occur.
“If there is load shedding, a small percentage of our system would be shut
down. If we lose a unit, we have enough spinning reserve to cover that, but
if there is anything more than that, we can have load shedding taking
place, affecting just a few thousand customers for a short time. We don’t
consider it a huge risk to the situation,” he said.
Francois added that T&TEC serves more than 500,000 customers.
T&TEC customers in Tobago will not be affected by the TGU shutdown this
weekend.
Photo: T&TEC general manager Curvis Francois