A six-hour power failure across Sarawak caused chaos and plunged more than two million people into darkness.
The electricity outage hit on Saturday evening, darkening cities and towns across the state and causing massive traffic jams as signals failed.
Perhaps, we may take a moment off and travel way back to August 3rd, 1996 where we had a much more notable Peninsular Malaysia power outage crisis where the whole of Peninsular Malaysia plunged into total darkness, momentarily taking our country off the surface of the Earth till the breaking of dawn spared us from our misery.
But what came after that incident was something that aroused my suspicion that the power outage incident was more like an act of sabotage by those in power with their well-hatched plan. Right after that incident, there was this sudden emergence of independent power producers where they were given lopsided contracts by our national utility corporation, namely Tenaga. History tells us that Tenaga was only made public few years earlier. A power outage could only justify the need to have those IPPs then and hence, it Happened!! What is visible till today is the fact that all these IPPs continue to enjoy sizable profits at the expense of Tenaga. And who actually own these IPP companies...
Interestingly, with recent announcement by certain quarters on the need to have a nuclear power plant and further need to build 12 dams, I can only hope that this recent power outage in Sarawak has nothing to do with these announcements.
Let us wait and see for what follows after last Saturday incident.
12 comments:
SARAWAK ELECTRICITY SUPPLY CORP. (SESCo)is a statutory authority established by the State Government of Sarawak. The Sarawak Government has a 55% ownership and Sarawak Enterprise Corporation Bhd (SECB) holds the remaining 45% shares. SESCo is an integrated utility (d) Northern Utility Resources (NUR) NUR ( www.khtp.com.my ) is a dedicated power producer serving the Kulim High Technology Park in Kedah, a state which is located in the north of Peninsular Malaysia. It has two subsidiary Companies, NUR Generating involved in electricity generation and NUR Distribution which is involved in electricity distribution. The capacity of this dedicated power plant is 450 MW which is implemented in 2 phases..
Sarawak does not have IPPs but has an associated power producer named Sejingkat Power Sdn. Bhd, which is a generating company, 49% owned by SESCo and the remaining 51% by Sarawak Enterprise Corporation Bhd. (SECB). It is situated at Sejingkat, Sarawak and has acapacity of 2 units of 50MW each fuelled by coal from Global Minerals near Kapit, Sarawak. Unit I was commissioned on 19 February 1998 and Unit 2 was commissioned on 15 May 1998.
Thanks to Lim K.Y for his reassurance to Whisperer's doubt.
Perhaps, Mr Lim K.Y. would like to share his professional stand on the status of Bakun and the proposal to erect the 12 dams.
Would appreciate if you could enlighten the people on the above mentioned issues.
Being a Sarawakian and Sibu as my hometown, Bakun is a flop. Ecology system messed up, out of budget, lack of transparency, can't even settle the local natives land dispute. Talk abt NEP? Native Customary Rights? It's more like the government neglected Sarawak and the natives of Sarawak. Until, they can settle the Bakun issue it's best not to mess with the 12 dams issue. Sarawakians are loosing the integrity of the current BN Government to handle the issue. They are NOT listening to the Voices of Rakyat! >.<
More on anilnetto's blog http://anilnetto.com/development-issues/ecological-disaster-in-sibu/
Lim, is this a prelude to them justifying Bakun on an accelerated need? Thus underscore the need to settle the NCR dispute?
After all, BN is still "very strong" with Taib heading the cast.
Dear Joe, I can't comment much on this issue, but in general, CM Taib's BN componnent failed in many ways, NCR dispute is one while their negligence toward Sarawak's developement is another issue, I can see it clearly as I am working in KL (developement is so much left behind)and worst of all, cronies closed to CM benifits too much. Lastly, I am not too sure how 'BERSIH' was the prevous election, *grinss* but, we all know their 'Election Culture' always involve benifits in return.
One thing I am sure is quite a number of my Dayak/Iban friends, on several ocassions, does express their dissatisfaction over BN's rulling here.
hmmm, you dont even know why the power failure happened!
kesihan you
The reason power failure happened was because he (CM Taib) is building the Mukah coal-fired power.
When Circuit 1 fails it triggers trips due to general power reduction: Tengah
KUCHING: The Ministry of Public Utilities has confirmed that the major power outage suffered by Sarawak on Saturday night was due to a shutdown to Circuit 1 between Bintulu and Sibu.
In a press statement issued here yesterday, the minister-in-charge Dato Sri Awang Tengah Ali Hassan said Circuit 1 finally tripped after the main grid had not been operating normally since 11.45am on Saturday.
He said it so happened that the initial problem happened while works were being carried out at the new Selangau 275kV substation.
He explained that the new substation was needed to connect the new Mukah coal-fired power station to the main grid as part of system expansion and reinforcement programme.
According to him, even before the power outage (or blackout) the main grid was not operating under normal operating condition since 11.45am that day.
The press statement was issued after Tengah, also the Second Minister of Planning and Resource Management, held a meeting with the state’s power utility company Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (Sesco) at its office in Petra Jaya here.
Sesco chief operations officer Danice Endawie, SPC station manager Mohamad Abdullah Ali, Sesco corporate affairs general manager Zuraimy Kushairi and the Ministry of Public Utilities’ Electricity Supply manager Fauzi Shahab attended the meeting with Tengah. They were briefed by Sesco (Transmission) general manager Victor Wong.
The rest of the statement is as follows:
“At 6.39pm, Circuit 2 between Selangau and Kemena, being the remaining circuit in operation, tripped, causing the system to split into two sub-systems.
“Due to insufficient generation capacity to meet the load demand in Kuching-Sibu sub-system, the generators in Batang Ai and Sejingkat Power Corporation (SPC) tripped, causing blackout in areas in Kuching, Sri Aman, Sarikei and Sibu.
“Restoration of supply in accordance with Standard Operating Procedure was nearly completed when Circuit 2 tripped again at 8.09pm.
“There is no fault in the overall system. The only suspect was the operational malfunction on the over-current protection relay at the Selangau 275kV substation. This over-current protection relay was deactivated and efforts were made to restore the power system again.
“At 10.28pm, the Bintulu Gas Turbine Unit 1 tripped due to over heating and caused an automatic under frequency load shedding.
“The Gas Turbine was put back in operation at 10.36pm. The supply was fully restored by midnight.
“In the case of Miri, the blackout was caused by the tripping of the Miri-Bintulu line at 7.30pm due to voltage abnormalities. Supply was fully restored by 10.30pm.
“The upgrading of the Circuit 1 (Bintulu-Sibu) will be completed latest by Aug 14, 2008. Within this period, it is expected that there is still a risk of system split.
“However, every effort is being made to avoid the recurrence of the tripping incident.”
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud in summing up the power outage incident, during a prize presentation function yesterday, said the Saturday night blackout was not due to insufficient supply of power but rather technical problems.
Taib, who is also Minister of Finance and Minister of Planning and Resource Management, assured that such blackout would not turn away investors.
He said it was “nothing compared to that in New York city, USA, in 1965″.
Taib told reporters this after the prize presentation function event involving AAM Malaysia Club Prix Championship held at the State Stadium in Petra Jaya.
thesundaypost yesterday reported that almost the whole of Sarawak was power-less for about three hours on Saturday evening in what could be one of the state’s worst electricity supply failures in recent years.
The power outage could best be described as a rolling blackout as it came in waves, starting from about 6.15pm to 6.40pm in Kuching and Sibu divisions.
It reached Miri about 7.30pm while some parts of Bintulu were struck by the blackout at 9pm.
The power returned intermittently in several parts of Kuching and Sibu starting about 7.40pm but within half an hour, it went out again and people found themselves wishing they had not put out their candles.
Electricity supply went back to normal in Miri and Sibu at 8.35pm. Kuching city centre, however, remained in darkness throughout the outage until about 9.30pm.
A senior personnel of Sesco when contacted at 9.20pm said that there was a problem with supply through Selangau, which is between Sibu and Mukah, to the state grid.
He pointed out that the Kidurong power station, which was connected to the grid through Selangau, was a major supplier of electricity to the state.
“Normally this kind of massive blackout is when the state grid got disrupted,” he said.
Sarawak General Hospital and the Kuching International Airport said their services were unaffected by the outage as they had their own emergency supply.
However, most of the petrol kiosks were forced to close down on Saturday night, leaving some motorists stranded. Traffic jams also occurred in several parts of Kuching because the traffic lights were out.
Oh my goodness WARRIOR of FALLACIES!!! How dare you insult Mr. Lim K.Y. who OBVIOUSLY has more mettle than you do in terms of substance, brain cells and mastery of the English Language.
Do us all a favour and learn to write properly in English before you condemn Mr. Lim or any other person in Blogosphere for that matter. Please do more research before you post anything. Read more.(OBVIOUSLY MR.LIM KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT UNLIKE YOU!)
Do more self-evaluation. Meditate more for you seem to think you are a level or two above us mortals. Judging from the way you write and think, let me say this loudly and clearly:
Please - give us all a break!STOP MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF. STOP POSTING COMMENTS. Correct the errors in your own blog first! You are TRULY PATHETIC! Did you not read my comment I posted specially for you that was written in Bahasa Malaysia (for fear that your comprehension level is dubious in view of your pathetic use skills in English esp in punctuation, sentence structure, GRAMMAR, spelling etc.). Please sign up for English classes!!! You desperately need it!
Do us all a favour and spell check your comments to see that there is substance, quality, maturity and logic BEFORE YOU SIMPLY POST ANYTHING according to your misguided whims and fancies. Better still, stop commenting until you iron out your writing problems let alone your reasoning skills which are in dire straits!
Oh - by the way *snigger snigger* as if you KNOW the true cause of the power failure....I hope you can UNDERSTAND what Mr. Lim posted in response to your ignorant comment. My turn to say...KASIHAN SI PATHETIC! Judge not. Condemn not. Look at yourself first.
I am being harsh because my first innuendo to you in BM did not make my point clear. End of my comment. I will NEVER READ ANY COMMENT FROM YOU IN ANY PART OF THIS UNIVERSE. What a total waste of time!
Mr Lim,
Thank you for your patience and contributions to update my readers with your valuable information.
News from Sarawak seldom makes its way to this part of the country for reasons of its own though we may share the same country name.
The overall context of my post was merely to point out whether the outage is out of an Act of Sabotage.. Technically, it can be done easily. And judging from the response of CM Mahmud Taib following the aftermath which is made available in http://sarawakheadhunter.blogspot.com, i can't help but to feel suspicious that there was indeed a foul play somewhere.
Afterall, a NEED has to be created to justify their Action. This time their Action is to build the proposed 12 dams.
Following that, we now may question their intention.. Is it for the good of the State and Its People or, it is just to enrich themselves? Lots of money and timber involved here.
We can all take a guess here and your guess is as good as mine.
Anon,
Thanks for your support. You have sharp observation about this shit stirrer going around the blogosphere posting useless comments.
I suggest that we don't waste our time with sadist like him. Mature readers do know how to differentiate between the genuine and those impostor.
Anyway, thanks for visiting my blog.
Ahh... the "shit" emanates foul odor which many now finds it nauseous... :). I agree with Whisperer... let him be...
Btw... thanks Lim for your input. Certainly helped us understand Sarawak's issues better. As I was discussing with a group of people, it could be their way of causing jitters amongst the people and yes... this sort of trip normally affects a big area. That is why I have been talking about taking communitites off the grid. They should pass new laws to allow people to come up with their own source of energy and live off the grid with a clean energy bill.
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