KOTA KINABALU: A statewide power outage yesterday brought much of Sabah and Labuan to a standstill for hours, affecting businesses and about half a million consumers.
Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd managing director Ir Abdul Razak Sallim described the major power outage as ‘beyond expectation,” adding that efforts were being carried out to identify the cause of the disruption.
He said initial investigation showed that the first power trip was recorded at 10:56:47 seconds due to current differential (red phase), but it was restored within 100 milisecond (ms), or 0.001 second.
“However, after restoration was done, a second later, our Independent Power Plant in Sepanggar tripped causing power losses of about 200 Megawatt (MW).
“We are surprised ourselves because actually, with the design used on the power installation, it should not have brought the system down. We are puzzled ourselves and will be investigating the real cause, which means going back to the operators to find out,” he explained to reporters, about four hours after the power disruption was clocked at 11.05am.
Abdul Razak said before the incident, there was 877MW of power available to meet the demand status for Sabah and Labuan at 731MW. The reserve was 146MW.
“However, after the incident, the losses were recorded at 352.8MW, or about 50 per cent total collapse. Our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is to activate the Emergency Response Plan (ERP) by activating the islanding mode at all affected areas.
We have six islands, namely Melawa, Salut, Labuan, Pangi, Tawau and Sandakan,” he said.
Restoration works were immediately carried out with Ranau being the first area to be fully restored at 12.15pm, after 70 minutes of power disruption, followed by Tawau and Labuan at 1pm, Keningau (1.50pm) and Semporna (1.55pm).
As of 4pm yesterday, about 70 per cent of power had been restored.
“We will wait for power to stabilise at all the islands before connecting it. It will be done in stages. We believe power will be restored by 6pm, and latest by 9pm,” said Abdul Razak. adding that at least 500,000 people were affected by the power outage.
As of 4.30pm, the Pangi and Labuan islands have been connected.
“We need an anchor plant in both the East and West coast areas to ensure that there is no repeat of such major power breakdown in the future,” he said.
On another development, Abdul Razak said customers are allowed to claim for damage to their electrical goods if they are able to prove it beyond doubt.
“What they need to do is to lodge a police report and submit the claim to us. We will assign a valuer to identify and prove the cause of the damage. If it is proven that it was due to negligence, then we are obliged to reimburse,” assured Abdul Razak.
Meanwhile, the power outage forced most shops at shopping complexes and other parts of the city to close between 5pm and 6pm, while traffic congestion was eased when policemen came to man various traffic intersections.
The last massive blackout that occurred in Sabah was in April 2012 when a gas piping system malfunctioned and affected several independent power producers. Supply was restored within the same day.