(Trinidad Guardian) A landslide triggered a chain of events that knocked out power to thousands of homes across Trinidad on Tuesday night and then again yesterday morning.

The Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) indicated that a landslide in Grant Trace, Rousillac, led to a 220kilovolt transmission tower shifting, putting excess strain on high voltage lines and resulting in a partial collapse of the tower and lines at 7 pm on Tuesday.

Load-shedding was immediately implemented, leading to sporadic outages across Trinidad on Tuesday night.

According to the commission, up to 30 per cent of its customers were taken offline. With the fault at the tower, Trinidad lost power from the Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU), Trinidad’s largest power generation plant. Independent Power Producers (IPPs) began providing T&TEC with additional capacity to make up for the shortfall, but delays in getting generators online led to most areas having supply restored by 1 am.

However, with increased power demand by yesterday morning, rolling load-shedding was instituted across Trinidad again, leading to additional outages lasting several hours.

According to T&TEC, these reduced loads allowed them to begin the initial phase of repairs, minimising the need for rolling load shedding over the next few days.