Gonzales: No compensation for blackout

MINISTER of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales suggested on Friday that people were not able to get any compensation for a loss of electrical supply during Wednesday’s islandwide power outage, answering an urgent opposition question in the House of Representatives.

This is in contrast to initial reports in Newsday on Friday which cited a Regulated Industries Commission (RIC) statement that suggested there could have been an entitlement to compensation.

In the Parliament, Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee suggested a compensation of $60 for individuals and $600 for businesses for the outage under rules set down by the RIC (known as guaranteed electricity standards), but Gonzales suggested the circumstances last Wednesday did not meet certain criteria for this.

Gonzales said, “I need to make it abundantly clear that this standard is subject to two exceptions – force majeure events and other events that are outside of TTEC’s control.

“As I read out a short while ago, there was a huge issue emanating from the independent producers which impacted upon TTEC’s ability to provide a supply of electricity to the country.”

Newsday understands a force majeure (“superior force”) event is extraordinary and beyond the reasonable control of parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, epidemic or sudden legal change.

Lee rose to suggest TTEC general manager Kelvin Ramsook had blamed TTEC on the outage. In reply, Gonzales said he had been asked a specific question and had replied to it.

Earlier, Gonzales replied to an opposition question to explain the cause of the blackout.

He said, “One Wednesday at 12.52 pm, a short circuit fault occurred on a 12,000 volt overhead line which crosses under the two 220,000 volts transmission overhead lines which connect the TTEC system to the Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) power station in La Brea.

He said the 12,000 volt line burst, made contact with the 220,000 volt lines, causing them to short circuit. Protective systems took these transmission circuits out of service as designed, disconnecting the TGU station from the TTEC system, he said. This caused the tripping of three other independent power producers and a de-energisation or blackout of the power system in Trinidad.