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A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) workforce is central to economic growth and development. To build such a workforce, there is need to promote STEM disciplines. This paper describes the use of a portable electrical engineering outreach toolkit that targets primary and secondary students. The Outreach Toolkit contains 1) a Van De Graff Generator, 2) Tesla Coil, 3) Joule Thief and 4) a Combinatorial Logic Designer Board. Based on the electrical engineering theory and principles as required by the primary and secondary school curricula, live demonstrations are to be conducted using these devices. Complemented with the Toolkit, there are user manuals and a suite of videos that describe various experiments, safety precautions and maintenance requirements. For evaluating the efficacy of the toolkit, a group of 1 primary and 1 secondary schools from the South Eastern Education District of Trinidad and Tobago was based, and their students and teachers were invited to participate a demonstration of the toolkit. Results showed that majority of the secondary school students (90%) indicated that the use of the toolkit could increase their interests in studying science. Some 95% of students indicated that the toolkit made learning science more fun and motivational, and would like to have the device equipped at their school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity transmission along overhead power lines has traditionally been limited by the transmission lines' thermal rating, defined in terms of a fixed, static rating. Load growth and the rapid increase in distributed generation have forced network operators to challenge these static ratings as overly conservative and explore alternative methods of maximising transmission line capacity. This paper describes the development of an overhead dynamic line rating software. The developed software is then applied to the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) transmission network. Ampacity calculations are performed using the IEEE 738 standard and implemented in MATLAB with an accompanying GUI. Results indicate that the line usage efficiency of one circuit examined in T&TEC's transmission network can be increased, suggesting technical and financial benefits to further this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power generation companies have to meet consumer demand and reliability criteria. The maintenance of generators needs to be performed regularly to ensure a reliable supply of electricity. An increase in repair frequency will result in greater maintenance cost together with an expected decrease in capital loss due to generator failure. An optimal maintenance schedule is therefore needed to find the best suited trade-off and lower the overall operation cost. Maintenance scheduling is a combinatorial optimisation problem for which an exhaustive search is typically infeasible due to the large size of the solution space. Metaheuristic optimisation techniques are therefore used to approximate global optimum schedules in finite time. This paper compares the uses of the local search methods (hill climbing, tabu search, simulated annealing) against genetic and memetic algorithms in the solution of the generator maintenance scheduling problem. The solution methods improve the previously implemented solution of generator scheduling for the Power Generation Company of Trinidad and Tobago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many students and staff utilize the facilities of The University of The West Indies St. Augustine campus at night. Inadequate lighting can make the school environment unsafe. This paper documents methodologies and the results of an audit conducted on the campus. The audit was performed to determine the adequacy of the campus lighting. Areas audited were identified via a survey distributed to students of the campus. The illuminance levels were measured at these locations and compared to applicable standards of the Illuminating Engineering Society. The results confirmed that none of the areas evaluated satisfied the lighting levels detailed in the standards. Recommendations and implementation plans accompanied by cost-benefit analyses were developed for each area ensuring the standards are satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the development and testing of a Transmission Line Parameter Calculator (TLPC), which computes the impedance parameters for short and medium transmission lines. LPARA, an existing software at The Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC), has been taken as the standard for comparison, since it has been tested and proved consistent with Power World Software, as well as it has been satisfactorily employed for decades at T&TEC. Comparative testing of the newly developed TLPC with LPARA revealed a maximum percentage difference of 0.05%, 0.02% and 0.80% in Series Resistance, Series Reactance and Shunt Admittance Matrices, respectively. The package, when compared to its FORTRAN based predecessor, LPARA, has a user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) with an expandable database of support structures and conductors. The TLPC has interactive program help, error checking, and validation of all user inputs. It is tailored to T&TEC, but yet flexible enough for use by other similar electric utilities. The finished product has demonstrated a vast improvement in the overall speed of parameter calculations, the reduced susceptibility to input errors and it has addressed recent compatibility issues which LPARA experiences as T&TEC upgrades and transitions to 64-bit Operating Systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]