TT Electricity Commission looking into power outages

The TT Electricity Commission (TTEC) will have discussions on long-term solutions to resolve the recurring problem of power outages in the country, officials said on Tuesday.

The statement comes on the heels of a power outage that affected about 10 per cent of customers between Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Corporate communications manager Annabelle Brasnell confirmed that at 10.05 pm on Monday and 2 am on Tuesday, TTEC experienced faults on its system, stemming from issues with several generator units of one of the independent power producers (IPPs). This triggered something called an “underfrequency scheme,” designed to avoid back-to-back outages to the same group of customers.

As a result, the system automatically shed customers in Trinidad to match the reduced capacity. Homes across the island including areas such as Diego Martin, Curepe and El Dorado were affected.

Brasnell said TTEC instructed the other IPPs to increase output to its full available capacity and to make standby generation available.

In both instances the power outages lasted 35 minutes and 26 minutes respectively.