Senior Reporter
dareece.polo@guardian.co.tt
Power outages that affected parts of the East-West Corridor, central Trinidad and south Trinidad on Tuesday night were caused by a fault at the PowerGen Point Lisas plant.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath told Guardian Media there was no evidence of sabotage.
Instead, he said T&TEC officials advised that shortly after 10 pm, Machine No 14 at the Point Lisas facility experienced a diode failure in its excitation system—a component that provides the magnetic field required for a generator to produce electricity.
The fault caused the generating unit to trip, resulting in the loss of 12 feeders and disrupting electricity supply to areas including Malabar, Independence Square, Longdenville, Lange Park, Endeavour, parts of Rio Claro and sections of the East-West Corridor.
Power was fully restored within about 30 minutes.
“PowerGen has provided a report to T&TEC. T&TEC is reviewing that report to ensure the system is operating properly and to prevent a recurrence of this type of failure. The issue relates to maintenance, and they will be inspecting all the feeders within that system to ensure they are properly maintained so that there is no recurrence,” Padarath said.
Padarath acknowledged that equipment failures can occur but said the incident underscored the importance of reviewing existing systems and maintenance practices to help prevent similar disruptions in the future.
