The OPPOSITION has accused the Government of selling citizens a 'pie in the sky' vision with its proposal to establish two artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in Trinidad and Tobago.Opposition Chief Whip Marvin Gonzales made the criticism yesterday during a news conference at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition on Charles Street in Port of Spain in response to the announcement that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and Hummingbird AI Holdings LLC to establish a framework for preliminary cooperation, due diligence and coordination for a proposed 150-megawatt artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centre facility.
‘TYRANNY’:Marvin Gonzales
Gonzales argued that the country's electricity grid lacks the capacity to support the Government's proposed construction of two AI data centres. He explained that the construction of data centres can have a number of implications for the country.The Arouca/Lopinot MP predicted that there would be a collapse in the country's reserve margin with the centres. He explained this is because the system would be overstretched as demand plus reserve of 2050 megawatts exceeds dependable capacity of 1,850 megawatts, making it overstretched by 200 megawatts of electricity per day, meaning that you can produce that at this point in time.Speaking about unit commitment, he said, 'All major plants at Penal, Point Lisas, TGU (Trinidad Generation Unlimited), Cove (Power Station), Standby, all these would need to be committed daily. No flex ibility remains for maintenance and outages.''So, if you have to shut down some of those units in order to undertake maintenance on a daily basis, you cannot shut down any. Because the minute you shut down any one of them, there will be widespread national blackout in Trinidad and in Tobago.''Your economic dispatch, less efficient and more costly units will run continuously, increasing fuel costs and emissions.'He warned that there will be reliability risks as a single large turbine outage of 200 to 300 megawatts would cause an immediate shortfall, again risking blackouts.Gonzales also spoke about investment necessity as it would relate to the centres.He explained that, 'A sustained 500 megawatts of AI load would require new generation capacity, either through new gas turbines, large scale renewable oil storage to restore reserve margins.' 'And of course, it would require the expenditure of millions of dollars in upgrading your electricity grid, the production of transformers, et cetera, and new substations,' he added.
