#Newsflash: 147,000 customers in 19 areas across the island affected in blackout; power supply restored within 38 minutes

The Energy Market Authority said that the “electricity supply to several areas was disrupted at 1.18am” and was fully restored some 38 minutes later at 1.56am.

SINGAPORE — A massive blackout hit several estates across the island in the early hours of Tuesday (Sept 18), affecting some 147,000 households and businesses.

Power was restored within 38 minutes and the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and utility provider SP Group are investigating the cause of the outage.

Preliminary findings indicate that the disruption, which occurred at 1.18am, was due to a partial loss of supply from two power generation units, according to SP Group.

The areas affected by the blackout were Boon Lay, Choa Chu Kang, Clementi, Jurong, Pandan Loop, Aljunied, Geylang, Tanjong Rhu, Mountbatten, Kembangan, Bedok, East Coast, Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Thomson, Mandai, Admiralty, Sembawang and Woodlands.

In a news release, the EMA said electricity supply was fully restored some 38 minutes later at 1.56am.

“The EMA takes a serious view of disruptions to Singapore’s electricity supply. We will review the outcome of our investigation before deciding on the actions to take,” said the authority.

It added that it will work with the industry to put in place measures to minimise the risk of such an incident happening again.

Some 146,797 residential and commercial customers were affected by the blackout, a statement from SP Group said.

Several affected customers took to the company's Facebook page to complain about the outage. A number of people also expressed frustration over the company's unresponsive 24-hour hotline.

Mr Jerry Chiu wrote: "Your 24h service line is not working. I just bought milk and ice-cream today, will you pay for the loss?"

Another user Federick Chong asked: "Was your hotline also affected by the power trip? I called more than 20 times but couldn't get a ringing tone even."

However, many customers were grateful power supply was restored within the hour.

Mr Muhammad Ridzuan Kamil said: "Other countries have it worse and maybe on a daily basis, so just relax and let the engineers do their job and thank and appreciate their hard work. Remember they sacrificed their time even at this hour for us."

In a service update on Tuesday morning, the SP Group said: "Our officers were immediately deployed to the affected areas and our priority was to restore supply as safely and quickly as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank the public for their patience."

This is the second major power outage in three months that has happened here. Earlier in June, some 3,156 customers were affected by a power outage in the Central Business District which lasted for 34 minutes.


Source from Today Online