Posted on by Kit

Blackout in Sarawak – Why?

Star Online
Blackout in Sarawak
By STEPHEN THEN

MIRI: A state-wide power cut in Sarawak on Saturday evening saw the blackout affect more than two million people over a distance of 1,000km from Kuching to Miri.

Cities and towns in the state were plunged into total darkness causing massive chaos as everybody was caught by surprise.

The power failure started in Kuching at about 6.30pm Saturday and rapidly spread northward to Sibu then to Miri by 7.30pm.

Deputy chief minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam when contacted by The Star confirmed that it was a blackout that seemed to have affected the main power grid.

“We (the state government) want to find out the source of the blackout. We need to know exactly what has triggered this massive state-wide blackout.

At 8.30pm Saturday the cause of the incident is still unknown.

Dr Chan, who is the state Industrial Development Minister, said that the Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (Sesco) is in the midst of trying to re-connect the power supply as soon as possible.

The state authority hopes that the people remain calm.

Meanwhile, thousands of people who were caught up in the massive traffic jam and in commercial complexes were reportedly evacuated without any incidents so far.

CategoriesUncategorized

45 Replies to “Blackout in Sarawak – Why?”

  5. “Deputy chief minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam when contacted by The Star confirmed that it was a blackout that seemed to have affected the main power grid.” STAR

    What?? Is this supposed to be a brilliant piece of journalism or what?? You do not need to be told nor should anyone seek to confirm if there’s a blackout when you couldn’t see where your as*s is in order to wipe it!

  6. Just more signs of corruptions.
    If People’s Party do not control 5 States plus Willayah…all these will be covered up by UMNO.
    Crack on freeways…. approving ..hundreds of reconditioned buses….at least.10 years old or more…saying Rapid services.
    Notice few buses are death traps now?
    So much..out into the open. UMNO is on defensive situations…more than anything else…….after the election.?
    The only thing..they are really working hard…is to find ways and means to jail Anwar again.

  8. I am not surprised by the blackouts, as over the years, not much attention was given to East Malaysian states – it looks as if they were abandoned and let to “rot”!

    The federal government should give equal attention and support to all states (be they ruling-partly led states or opposition led states) to ensure UNIFORMITY and FAIRNESS in national development. Otherwise, come 2020 it will be an eye-sore to see some states enjoy the affluence and comfort of the First World and others struggle to feed and clothe their populace.

  9. In Malaysia, a blackout costing billions RInggit means nothing at all. Nobody is responsible. Murder, nobody responsible. Remove ganja worth million from Police station – nobody responsible. Just transfer one person to another department. The minister responsible? No way lah.

    In ocrporate sector, shareholdrs would demand resignation. Recently Bursa computer glitch, the head of IT resigned. But government, no way.

  12. Any electrical engineers out there to second what I’m about to say?

    This is what happens when a developer applies for TNB supply. After TNB has approved the construction drawings. TNB will come up with a “contribution sum” which the developers have to pay to TNB. The contribution sum is for the equipment in the substation (If there is/are subtations), and all necessary wiring works to individual units be it houses or shoplots. All that is fine until the TNB’s sub-contractors gets to work. TNB will get the sub contractors to work when they feel like it, in many cases they start work after the roads have been paved by the developer. Why? Is it so they can get some Variation Orders i.e. like diamond cutting the road and repaving. I thick anybody can testify to the quality of the patch up. Secondly, instead of copper cables they use aluminium cables. Aluminium cables are cheaper but the problem with aluminium cables is the higher resistance and the greater voltage drop per meter/foot run. Simply putting it, it cost more for TNB to supply per kilowatt/hr to the consumer as the aluminium cable consumes more power then copper cables. The “savings” (question here is does the saving go to TNB or the contractor) on the cable is one time only but the cost to transmit the power through the less efficient aluminium cable is continuous.

    Rakyat sodomized again. Malaysia Boleh.

  13. Look at the HIGHWAYS in Sarawak. They are all like the West Malaysian kampong streets, or even below kampong standard. Narrow, two lanes, and let you dance all the time. Let Taib’s Rolls-Royce drive in Sibu all the time.

    How can the chief minister is the richest among all whereas the infrastructures in Sarawak are the top from the bottom? When will the people in the state wake up? In order for the people to wake up, political parties like SUPP should first wake up. Instead of trying to fight and get what we need, the SUPP politicians are like those in MCA. They prefer to hold balls and be the mistress No 3 or 4 in BN. As soon as the mistress gets something, SUPP politicians are happy and they would not care about the people.

    Most Iban/Dayak politicians are the same. Once they get a top position, they forget about their long house folks who actually pushed them up to the top.

    Again, let me remind you that Malays are not the majority in Sarawak and they are not the one holding the power. Ibans/Dayaks are the majority, but they are also not the one with power. The one with power is the minority Melanau – Peihin Taib. Chinese? No, just a mistress among the population in Sarawak.

  14. Opposition in Sarawak is still weak. Weak in the sense of number and qualifications.

    ACA is now with teeth? Then why not investigation Taib. There are endless allegations about him and his family involved in managing the state as family matters. We heard of Chong who made a few statements before. Since then, no one was able to express any view about Taib. Whenever the media raises issues about Taib, he will bring it to court for defamation lawsuit.

    UMNO would not care how bad is Taib, as soon as he can bring in many votes for BN. It is not just Abdullah. Even Mahathir has been closing one of his eyes during his tenure as prime minister, although he is now advocating how clean should a government be (unfortunately many of those dirty jobs originated from his time).

  15. Sarawak elect. is not under TNB, but SESCO,
    TNB matter: it is not “contribution charges”, but “connection charges”. Timing for TNB work can be right if all cooperate / coordinate well.
    Many underground cable were laid after road paving (then cut the road, re-paving etc. ) is bcos
    a). Poor coordination between, consultant / contractor / TNB / Owner / local authorities etc.
    Not fair to blame TNB alone (though TNB can be at fault some time).
    IMHO, the problems are
    1). Most salaried engineers (in consultants or contractors) are overworked, handling too many projects at one time. Bosses can’t help, Fees / profit margin are low ! hence poor coordination.
    2). Most Owner / developer usually do not paid TNB on time.(though not all owner).
    3). Most TNB office took too long time to act, need to be nagged / reminded many times before “action” (though some TNB office are better)
    Aiyah! Too long to really explain. sigh !
    It is not true Alum. cable consume more power, but it is cheaper than copper cable. Voltage drop can be compensated by using bigger aluminium cable. In Msia, Alum. cable usually for 6.6 KV and above, household cable usually is copper.

  16. Sarawak is as big as West Malaysia. With prices on the increase, it is no wonder people are stealing government things or private things. Cables, wires, even sacred stuff from the graveyard. Even after being electrocuted to death on one of the electrical towers, there are still people selling their lives out to steal all these metal stuff and re-sell them at high prices. You want to talk about a wastage of public funds ? You want to talk about security ? You want to talk about a civilized society ? Corruption is keeping Sarawak in the jungles. What’s so great about the world’s rainforest music festival if it does not push Sarawak to greater heights ? Rich Sarawakians all leave the jungle for the West, Australia and New Zealand. You think they really care for the land of their ancestors ? Ibans and natives prefer to be westernized, rather than follow the ways of their ancestors. Dangling RM 50 in front of their faces is enough to make them change their minds of really caring for their land. They have not come to a stage whereby they will think of patriotism. May be one or two of the Ibans. But the rest. Well ? They are as human as you and I. Sabah is more courageous.

  18. Correct, correct and correct remark from Damocles…everything will be swept under the carpet of BN Sawarak.

    For good example, many local indegenious and orang asli long houses were destroyed and their lands were token away by force by irresponsible people and greedy politicians in Sawarak. Their ancestors inheritance assets were raped and sodomized by greedy rapists and robbers.

    The doomsday of darkness in Sawarak is coming soon with the blackout warning sign to the politicians and greedy BN rulers in CAT state. It is timely the people of Sawarak to act for immediate change for a CAT system to eradicate corruptions, nepotism, croniysm, family political powers, abuse power, mismanagement and greedy politicians and authorities in Sawarak.

    The Opposition parties are too weak and no power to act and protect the CAT people. So their own Sawarakians have to do something for an immediate change before another big blackout in CAT forever.

  19. 1). Most salaried engineers (in consultants or contractors) are overworked, handling too many projects at one time. Bosses can’t help, Fees / profit margin are low ! hence poor coordination.

    *** I disagree with you on this one. The process can be speeded up if you are willing to pay a bit more.

    2). Most Owner / developer usually do not paid TNB on time.(though not all owner).

    ***Yes, there are such cases. The current lead time needed/given is 6 months. Not enough?

    It is not true Alum. cable consume more power, but it is cheaper than copper cable. Voltage drop can be compensated by using bigger aluminium cable. In Msia, Alum. cable usually for 6.6 KV and above, household cable usually is copper.

    *** I know of many developments in B.B.Bangi where Alu cables were used for 220V from feeder pillar to shops and individual units. Alu cables have higher resistance and that part of the circuit is before the individual consumers meters. When resistance is higher power needed is higher. Power = current squared x resistance. So power required is higher. When you consider 6.6 KV it is negligible but a 220V it is a lot. And the sizes of the cables were not increased.

  20. Hi YB kit,
    i do not know what you are trying to prove here. Problem occurs sometimes. There is no perfect system. Even i work in a big mature MSC company, issue always arise, there is always a loop hole which we always trying to improve. You have left the room for us to guess whether it is mis-management, corruption..etc, but what is the point here. I don’t see if PR take over the country will free of all this as well.

    what is the status of one DAP’s municipal in Penang that got a summon? He tried to act as Hero ( or he thinks can settle under ground) by asking the summon issued to him instead of his girlfriend who operate a un-licensing night pub? If he is a responsible person, he should not encourage his girl friend to break the law. You see, DAP also has this kind of people. We hope a better quality of leaders from PR, but not so so with BN.

  22. Yes, there are many cases of copper theft recently as copper price is very high now.
    Another bad thing in Msia on building development is that most private developer / owner usually do not paid their contractor / consultant on time!, so Mr. choonchoy, are U not contradicting yourself??
    You said ppl should be willing to pay a bit more, yet you know ppl ??????????????????????????????suppose to pay usually do not pay?

  24. Excellent timing ! This is good for Taib’s push to build 10 more dams in Sarawak. Logging in the catchment areas are going to commence soon. The government will also award contracts to build transmission lines.

    Some people are rubbing their hands in glee. Contracts, contracts, contracts are what keeps the den of thieves want…

  27. Tomorrow SESCO is going to blame the overworked transmission network, and will say that a 500kV transmission backbone is needed. Then the following day, Taib Mahmud and his cronies crank up their calculators…

  30. For half of the Sarawak grid to go down, there needs to have 2 elements.

    1. A major power station(s) when offline (for whatever reason).
    2. The safety cutoff of the grid did not work OR does not exist.

    When a power station goes offline, the other power station on the grid will cover its power output, however if the power requirement is too high, it will overload the rest of the power station on the grid. Which cause the cascading (domino) effect.

    But history has taught power engineers to build in grid cutoff to protect the rest of the power station. In West Malaysia, we had a similar event which started in Trengganu which caused major blackout through out Peninsular Malaysia in the 1990s (IIRC).

    It is better to cutoff that section of the grid to keep the power stations up then causing massive power stations failure due to overload.

    Whatever the cause. Jabatan Bekalan Elektrik (JBE) needs to come in to investigate together with IEM. PAC should convene special session to review the investigation report and audit the corrective and preventive measures recommended by JBE and IEM.

    An INTERNAL investigation by SESCO ONLY can NOT DO it.

    Building more dams/power station will not solve such a massive outage. It is the grid design!

  31. Y? Y? What happened to our worldclass engineers and maintenance technicians?

    A follow up of this? Qantas has decided to abandon plans to have two of its 737s undergo major services in Malaysia, following a series of recent mechanical problems.

  32. You call the Sarawak grid a grid design? It is just one line stretching between Kuching in Miri. You dont need to be rocket scientist to know that this is bad design. If one pylon falls the whole grid is affected. To have 100% redundancy it has to be in a ring configuration. Similarly, I can foresee an engineering disaster waiting to happen if they are feed the peninsula with the single under water cable from Bakun. BTW I thought we have generation plants in Kuching, Batang Ai, Sibu, Bintulu and Miri with all of them feeding into the grid. So how could the whole state be affected?

  34. Welcome to the world of darkness ! A major black out in Sarawak & next the news was spread almost every corner of the media !
    Well ! A major blackout & short of water supply in Sabah ! The response is “No people give a damn”. We had been living like this for generations, So people in Sarawak, please don’t try to complain too much. Even you guys got bloody god damn dam to generate electricity, don’t worry, you guys don’t get the supply better than us. Thats fact ! Enjoy the darkness !

  35. Like the MRR2, they will blame this blackout on the inadequate grid. So they will spend a few hundred million to reinforce the grid, with Taib’s cronies and relatives winning most of the work. Then after the warranty period expires in 12 months, the problems resurface….

    Barang Naik thieves, there is no way we can trust them.

  36. Many Sarawakians believe the reason is more sinister. Lately, Taib Mahmud has been heavily critized for his plan to build a dozen more dams. People are saying tha Bakun alone can even supply its excess electricity to Pen Malaysia so why need another dozen more? The reason is of course simple, to make the Taib family richer through these huge projects. So this blackout is to justify the building of the additional dams concerned.

  38. Once you have approval to build more dams, you will have approval to log upstream and downstream. That’s where the money is – logging. Remember Ekran logged the catchment areas of Bakun BEFORE full approval was given, and when the government took over the project, Ekran was given RM800 million in “compensation” by the federal government ?

    Yes, this Barang Naik government knows how to duplicate things. They give you the licence to go ahead and pillage, and if you fail to pillage enough, you return the licence to the government and they give you compensation ! Bolehland’s definition of a win-win situation.

  39. Why the panic? Every now and then machines will fail no matter what precautions you take.

    It has happend in rcent years along the whole of the west coast of USA and in many other countries in Europe, India, Pakistan, China etc.

    But we should not allow Taib to use this as an excuse to ram through his ill-conceived (including from an irreversible adverse impact on th environment) plans for 12 dams in Sarawak at probably over-inflated contract cost to croneys. And certainly without open-tenders.

    We will be well advised to listen to people such as Tan Sri Ani Arope, ex-Tenaga MD, who recounted how the EPU under Dr.M forced Tenaga into giving away ‘take or pay’ 100% guaranteed IPP contracts with pass-on cost escalation caluses to a select few who had no track record, on direct-negotiations contracts.

    If we have Bakun, why the hell do we need 12 more dams?
    http://donplaypuks.blogspot.com

  41. Cabinet meeting held and decided to

    1) allocate RM10m to engage consultant to study the outage and render report;

    2) allocate RM10m to engage a second consultant to study first consultant’s report and to explain the report;

    3) allocate RM100 for remedial works.

    Itu cara kita.

  42. taiking Says:

    Today at 11: 23.30 (4 hours ago)
    Cabinet meeting held…..
    3) allocate RM100 for remedial works.
    Hei, are you sure RM 100 is enough ??

    Be fair, power failure can happen, but surely do not need another 10 or so hydro elect. dams in Sarawak, one Bakun is more than enough !

  44. ~~pulau_sibu Says:
    Yesterday at 00: 20.31

    All public services have been so lousy in Sarawak, ….~~~

    not just lousy, electricity tariff is also the highest in Malaysia

    while Sarawak is one of the top oil revenue contributor to the country, its road condition is the worst in the country … why rob 95% of the oil revenue from Sarawak while the state badly need the fund to improve the infrastructures? Lapok road in Miri is one of the worst road in South east Asia… probably IN the whole ASIA.

    Why the Sarawakian need to pay Rm10 to cross ASEAN BRIDGE in Miri (just crossing the river) which is higher than the cost to cross Penang Bridge(crossing the sea)?

    Wondering whether our forefathers had made the ‘right decision’ 45 years ago

  45. 12 more dams to supply energy to the moon? Taib must be kidding. Asking people to leave their land of ancestor again for a compensation of rm250 per family in a long house .. Those people who have been ask to leave (by force) should straight away go to his house in Kuching and demand for explaination. Hey Jabu, why u dun help ur own people? Instead, being number 2?

Leave a Reply