Power outage hits north Trinidad

At 8.49 am, a system failure at PowerGen on Wrightson Road, prompted power outages in the Western Peninsula, Diego Martin, Santa Cruz, St Ann’s, Maraval, Laventille, Cascade, Morvant and parts of Mt Hope.

Several stores in downtown Port-of-Spain closed for the morning. Shopping malls, among them Capital Plaza, Aboutique and Town Centre Mall shut their doors for security purposes.

Businesses with PBX systems were severely affected by the outage as they were unable to send or receive telephone calls or use their fax machines.

Telephone systems at the Eric Williams Financial Complex, Ministry of Education and Service Commissions were down for an hour. Internet operations were also at a virtual standsitll for some businesses. Employees from offices around Port-of-Spain returned home at mid-morning. Workers from government offices at the Eric Williams complex were unable to function without air-conditioning and electricity and eventually left for home at about 9.40 am.

The power outage did not affect operations at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital (PoSGH) and the St Ann’s Hospital.

The North West Regional Health Authority’s (NWRHA) communications department reports that the the generator at PoSGH kicked in “almost immediately” at the onset of the power failure.

A senior official at the St Ann’s Hospital told Newsday the generator there was up and running throughout the outage.

Omar Khan, PowerGen’s corporate communicatios manager, told Newsday the number four generating unit at the Wrightson Road plant tripped off which had a domino effect on the other three units which went down as well. This, he said, caused the plant to be without power for about an hour.

Khan said by 10 am, engineers from PowerGen and Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Company (TTEC) managed to get one of the units back up, and electricity in some parts of Port-of-Spain was restored. Power was eventually restored to all affected areas by 12.15 pm. Khan added that engineers at the PowerGen plant were up to yesterday afternoon, unable to ascertain the cause of the trip-off.