SESB: Generator shutdown to blame for state-wide outage in Sabah

KOTA KINABALU, Jan 22: The power blackout in Sabah on January 17 was due to the shutdown of four generators at an Independent Power Producer (IPP) station in Sepanggar, said Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) managing director Ir Abdul Razak Sallim.

He said the findings on the outage, which affected about 500,000 consumers, were made by the special committee set up by SESB to investigate the incident.

“Prior to the incident, the generation capacity was 877MW while the demand was 731MW. There was a still a margin of 146MW, which showed that the grid in Sabah was in good order,” he told reporters after presenting a briefing to Cabinet ministers on the issue.

However, when there was a disruption at one of the IPP gas generators and at Patau-Patau, Labuan, the capacity decreased to 633.6MW and when SESB applied load shedding the demand decreased to 585.1MW.

SESB still had a margin of 48.5MW and could still support the demand, he said.

Abdul Razak said the IPP’s action caused the generation capacity to decrease to 525MW as opposed to the demand of 585MW, or supply deficit of 60MW.

He said the shut down by the IPP of the four generators in 23 seconds prevented SESB from resorting to load shedding to balance the demand and generation capacity at the time.

“When four generators at the Salut station were shut down manually, it resulted in a decrease in frequency below the safety level, prompting the collapse of the whole system in Sabah at 11.11am,” he said.

Abdul Razak said SESB was informed by the IPP management that they needed to shut down the four generators because of technical problems, among them, the gas damper which had malfunctioned and could lead to massive damage if not shut down.

Meanwhile, Sabah Energy Commission west coast director Nazlin Abd Alim Sidiki said the commission was still investigating and looking for evidence before finalising their findings on the actual cause of the outage.

She said under the Electricity Supply Act and Electricity Regulations 1994, the licence issued by the commission to the IPPs including SESB could be revoked if there was evidence that they did not comply with the guidelines.

source: BERNAMA