Another manicou blamed for power dip

An­oth­er man­i­cou has been blamed for pow­er prob­lems af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad, less than a month af­ter T&TEC at­trib­uted a se­ries of elec­tric­i­ty dis­rup­tions to an­i­mal in­ter­fer­ence.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) said an opos­sum (man­i­cou) caused a brief pow­er dip around 8 p.m. on Thurs­day, af­fect­ing sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

The Com­mis­sion said the 10-sec­ond in­ter­rup­tion af­fect­ed res­i­den­tial ar­eas in­clud­ing Madras Road, Chin Chin Road and St Lu­cien Road, Diego Mar­tin, while sev­er­al in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enced short-du­ra­tion in­ter­rup­tions.

T&TEC said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­plet­ed on Fri­day morn­ing found that the fault orig­i­nat­ed on the Bam­boo/Or­ange Grove 66kV sub-trans­mis­sion cir­cuit and was caused by an opos­sum (man­i­cou).

The Com­mis­sion said its tech­ni­cal teams prompt­ly ad­dressed the fault and nor­malised sup­ply to the af­fect­ed ar­eas.

The lat­est in­ci­dent comes less than a month af­ter T&TEC Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Ian Ram­rat­tan said a man­i­cou was re­spon­si­ble for two faults that caused pow­er dis­rup­tions and volt­age dips in the Sad­dle Road and San­ta Cruz ar­eas on Au­gust 11..

Ram­rat­tan said those faults re­sult­ed in some cus­tomers los­ing elec­tric­i­ty for a few sec­onds, while oth­ers ex­pe­ri­enced volt­age dips with­out los­ing sup­ply. A sec­ond fault lat­er caused a longer in­ter­rup­tion.

He al­so said the first fault caused volt­age dips that were felt as far east as parts of Trinidad.

Ram­rat­tan said an­i­mal in­ter­fer­ence was not un­usu­al on T&TEC's net­work, with frogs and snakes al­so ca­pa­ble of caus­ing faults. The Com­mis­sion has mea­sures, in­clud­ing an­i­mal guards, to pro­tect sec­tions of the net­work, al­though Ram­rat­tan said breach­es can oc­cur de­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion.

T&TEC said Thurs­day's in­ci­dent was not re­lat­ed to the nat­u­ral­ly oc­cur­ring El Niño weath­er phe­nom­e­non.

The lat­est ex­pla­na­tion comes hours af­ter for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les called on T&TEC and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to ad­dress wider re­ports of elec­tric­i­ty dips and fluc­tu­a­tions across the coun­try.

Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion had re­ceived nu­mer­ous com­plaints from cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in their elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply.

He raised con­cerns about pos­si­ble dam­age to house­hold ap­pli­ances and oth­er elec­tri­cal equip­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the fi­nan­cial pres­sures fac­ing many cit­i­zens.

Gon­za­les called on T&TEC and the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain the cause of the re­port­ed fluc­tu­a­tions and out­line the steps be­ing tak­en to ad­dress them.

T&TEC said it re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a re­li­able and se­cure elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply and con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the na­tion­al grid. It apol­o­gised to cus­tomers for any in­con­ve­nience caused by Thurs­day night's in­ci­dent.