Parliament committee postpones blackout inquiry

A parliamentary committee on Wednesday postponed its inquiry into last Wednesday's nationwide blackout to an unknown future date.

The Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) chaired by Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George met privately and virtually from about 1.30 pm, and was then due to sit publicly to question key entities involved in the generation, supply and administration of electricity nationally.

Reporters patiently awaited the start of the public sitting, due at 2.30 pm, but by 3.06 pm parliamentary staff notified media houses by WhatsApp message that this would not happen that day.

"Good afternoon. By a majority decision the committee has agreed to postpone today's proceedings. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Initially Parliament had given reporters an impressive list of 28 public officers slated to appear before the PAAC, drawn from six entities.

These teams came from the Ministry of Public Utilities (under deputy permanent secretary Beverly Khan); T&TEC (under general manager Kelvin Ramsook); PowerGen (under general manager Dr Hayden Furlonge); Trinity Power (under assistant plant manager Abdool Azimullah); Trinidad Generation Unlimited (under chairman Sandra Jones); and the Ministry of Energy (under acting permanent secretary Sandra Fraser.)

Last Thursday at a briefing Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales said, "A major disruption occurred on T&TEC's distribution and transmission system, where two main transmission lines from Gandhi Village to Union Estate came into contact with a 12-kilovolt line as a result of that disruption.

"It caused a major trip on the distribution system around Trinidad and Tobago, causing all of the machines and plant at TGU to go out of operation. As a result of that major disruption at TGU, the other standby measures that we had in place from Trinity and PowerGen did not provide the level of sustainability to the distribution system causing all of the machines and plants to go down."

On Friday, Gonzales addressed the issue by replying to an opposition question in the House of Representatives.

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

Also on Friday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said the Government had named a three-man team, chaired by retired professor of electrical engineering Dr Chandrabhan Sharma, to probe the blackout and report within a month.