Power supply restored after blackout, Senoko Power could face fines

choongyong.koh — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:12:46 -0000

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A hawker tends to her stall during a power outage

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SINGAPORE : Several parts of Singapore experienced a power failure on Thursday afternoon.

Callers to the MediaCorp News hotline reported the blackouts in several areas around the island.

Hawkers at Golden Mile Food Centre simply took the power outage in their stride, as they continued to tend their stall with the help of candles. Power supply there was disrupted for about two hours.

Other areas affected included Choa Chu Kang, Bukit Batok, Bukit Timah, Woodlands and Jalan Eunos.

The reason for the blackout - two power generation plants at Senoko Power Station tripped.

The two power generation units failed because Senoko experienced a disruption in gas supply from Petronas, Malaysia.

Senoko says this is its first gas supply incident here. Senoko supplies about 30 percent of electricity to Singapore.

The incident today caused its supply to dip by about 10 percent.

Senoko says the incident was sudden and instantaneous.

"We have normally, in such circumstances, switch to both either diesel fire-generation or to switch to alternative gas supplies. But the instantaneous nature of the supply disruption meant that we were unable to call in such backup capability," explains Roy Adair, president and CEO of Senoko Power.

Senoko says the incident is also not due to the wet weather or poor maintenance.

"In fact, the whole facility is regularly maintained and it's been recently checked, so the entire infrastructure related to the gas supply is working perfectly. So at this stage, we're looking to the results of our investigation," says Adair.

Senoko says a comprehensive investigation is underway and the losses it says will be penalty enough.

The last time such a major power failure took place was on 29 June 2004.

Since then, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) has imposed new regulatory controls on the energy market to prevent blackouts from taking place again.

More than 300,000 homes were left in the dark in June 2004.

What happened then was that piped gas from Indonesia to Singapore's power stations was disrupted by a technical fault.

And most turbines were unable to switch to the backup source of fuel - diesel.

This severely affected power supply and the result was major economic losses of over $6 million and "a harmed reputation" for Singapore according to the government.

One month later, EMA announced new regulatory controls.

The aim is to improve reliability by imposing tougher penalties for poor performance.

This included a $1 million fine for blackouts affecting areas, for example, the size of a housing board estate.

The penalty rises to $2 million for the third and subsequent occurrences within a year of the first incidence.

A $50,000 fine is imposed for blackouts affecting a few blocks of flats. This rises to $100,000 for the third and subsequent incident occurring in a month.

Companies also face a fine of up to $50,000 if power is not restored within 3 hours of a blackout that affects, for example, a hotel or commercial building.

It is still uncertain at this point what penalty Senoko Power will face, at least after a thorough investigation is conducted.

After the June 2004 incident, a high-level committee was also set up to look at how to prevent such disruptions.

The panel suggested that Singapore import liquefied natural gas (LNG) to diversify the fuel mix and increase energy security.

The government approved this proposal and a LNG receiving terminal, costing some US$500 million, will be built by 2012.

The committee also urged Singapore to move to an open access, interconnected gas transmission system.

In an open access system, any gas producer can offer gas into a common pool and importers can draw from it to meet their needs.

Currently, about 70 percent of Singapore's electricity is generated by natural gas, sourced from Malaysia and Indonesia's West Natuna and South Sumatra fields.

The panel said Singapore should have more diversified sources of natural gas. - CNA /ls

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Power supply restored after blackout, Senoko Power could face fines