NEWS & UPDATES

KUCHING, 24TH MAY 2017, WEDNESDAY: Two separate tripping incidents along the Kemena-Bintulu and Similajau-Tudan transmission lines caused power supply disruptions to Miri, Sri Aman and some parts of Kuching today.

One of the Kemena-Bintulu transmission lines tripped at 12.45pm and to prevent the remaining line from overload and also tripping, Sarawak Energy’s automatic defence system for southern Sarawak kicked in immediately with load shedding to some affected areas in Kuching and Sri Aman helping to minimise the impact of the outage, lessening disruption time and maintaining supply to critical facilities such as the airport and hospitals. The line was re-energised at 1.10pm with full restoration achieved by 3.10pm.

The northern region was affected separately when a double tripping occurred at 4.12pm along the Similajau-Tudan transmission line affecting Miri for a short while with the line re-energised at 4.21pm. Full restoration for Miri was achieved by late afternoon. Earlier today at 8.35am, some parts of Miri also experienced power interruption due to a fault at the overhead power lines supplying Canada Hill, Hospital Road, Jalan Cahaya and part of Padang Kerbau. Supply to these affected areas was fully restored by 3pm following completion of repair works.

Lu Yew Hung (卢友云) , Sarawak Energy Group Chief Operating Officer said; “We deeply regret the inconvenience experienced by our customers due to these outages. 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 manage the condition of our transmission lines to minimise the risk of major outages such as what had occurred today.”

The 500kV Second Transmission Line will strengthen reliability of electricity supply to the Central and Western regions of the state by providing additional circuits parallel to the existing 275kV transmission line connecting major power stations to load centres in southern Sarawak.

For areas such as Miri in the northern region, several measures to strengthen reliability have been undertaken including investing in additional injection points from Similajau to Bunut to Marudi junction.

Sarawak Energy was able to improve recovery time in these incidents due to several system-strengthening modifications following recommendations from an international consultant after the November 2016 outage.