Published on: Thursday, April 30, 2009 |
Kota Kinabalu: Power disruptions across the State could be avoided if people play their part by minimising electricity usage especially during peak hours.
Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) managing director, Baharin Din, however said it would require cooperation from the 405,000 consumers including from the public and private sectors.
He said even though the power shortage situation is temporary, the people can assist by using electricity as and when needed only.
"It's very easy, switch off what you don't require. It won't inconvenience you and it doesn't cost to save," he said at a media briefing, here Wednesday.
While this exercise would not produce immediate results, he said there is a need for a change in the people's mindset and attitude.
"So, we would like to appeal to the people, to save electricityÉlet's do this gotong royong.
"Let us show to the world that we can do it in Sabah," he said.
Citing the Earth Hour on March 28, Baharin said power load or usage went down by 50megawatt between 8pm and 9pm.
The normal peak hours when there is high usage of electricity is between 11am and 2pm, 3pm and 5pm and 7pm and 8.30pm.
Load shedding in the West Coast and East Coast for the past several days, according to Senior General Manager Peter Lajumin was due to several power plants being inoperable.
According to him, two hydro plants with a combined power output capacity of 44MW in Tenom were badly damaged by the recent floods.
In addition, he said they also lost 15MW from the steam turbine plant in Patau-Patau, Labuan, because it was not able to acquire the de-mineralised water from Petronas for its cooling system.
"We also lost 35MW from the gas turbine power plant in Labuan as it is currently carrying out critical maintenance work," he said.
The Independent Power Producer (IPP) in Sepanggar, he said also contributed to the load shedding when it suffered damage resulting in it being unable to distribute 30MW of electricity.
He said one of the hydro-powered plant in Pangi, Tenom, would only be operable in June while the gas turbine-powered plant in Labuan in 12 days.
However, he said they could not determine when the steam turbine-powered plant would be activated again as it would depend very much on the materials supplied by Petronas.
As for the IPP plant, Peter said he was made to understand that it has managed to rectify the damage.
All in all, he said they lost about 120MW during the recent load-shedding period.
The present facilities in Sabah have a capacity to produce 650MW of electricity.
However, as end of this year, the SESB hopes to have an additional 120MW from the setting up four sources namely 20 units of permanent generator sets (gensets), six mobile gensets, 40 rehabilitated existing sets and 60MW from an independent power provider (IPP).
