NEWS & UPDATES

KUCHING, 5TH JUNE 2017, MONDAY: Sarawak Energy restored supply in about an hour to areas in Kuching which were affected by the tripping of the Kemena-Bintulu transmission line that occurred at 12.21pm today.

“We deeply regret the inconvenience experienced by our customers due to this outage,” said Mr. Lu Yew Hung (卢友云) , Sarawak Energy Group Chief Operating Officer.

“In this incident, our automatic defence system for southern Sarawak kicked in immediately and back up supply from Sg. Biawak Diesel Power Station was immediately mobilised.  Restoration to most areas were done within half an hour and full restoration was around 1.30pm.

“We are closely monitoring the Kemena-Bintulu transmission line after the previous tripping.  We have just completed the first round of investigation on the line using drone for thermal scanning and the result shows that the line is still in good condition and the tripping was due to external transient factors.   Our team also climbed up the towers and manually checked the insulators to look for minor faults that could have triggered the tripping.  At this point we are still not able to determine the actual cause of the tripping and further investigation is in progress. To ensure that we have covered all angles, we have also issued notices to contractors working within the vicinity of the lines to advise them to place extra caution when implementing works in the area.  

“Until we identify the actual cause of the tripping, we will continue to run the Sg. Biawak Diesel Power Station to generate sufficient capacity to cater for the Southern region load demand.  Rest assured that we are addressing this matter seriously,” said Mr. Lu.

Until the completion of the 500kV Second Transmission Line, the risk of major outages involving our transmission lines remains. We have stepped up on measures to ensure proactive maintenance of our transmission lines through initiatives such as regular thermal scanning, vegetation management and scheduled line inspections to minimise the risk of major outages caused by the lines tripping.

With the 500kV Second Transmission Lines, the reliability of our electricity supply especially to the Central and Western regions of the state will be strengthened by providing additional circuits parallel to the existing 275kV transmission line connecting major power stations to load centres in southern Sarawak.