Malaysia faces power blackout threat

Tenaga Nasional
Bhd said its delayed Central Area Reinforcement
(CAR) transmission project is
exposing Malaysia to risk of a
major power failure.

The CAR project, TNB’s
fourth high-capacity transmission
route has been met
with protests by some 20 families

The issue has since been
politicised, and has delayed
the RM324 million project by
more than a year. It should
have been completed in August
last year.

“TNB is now operating under
high risk due to insufficient
transmission capacity
from the existing three high
capacity routes,” said TNB
president and chief executive
officer Datuk Seri Che Khalib
Mohamad Noh at a briefing
here yesterday.

About 98 per cent of the project
is completed, leaving only
the disputed two per cent or
1km of the 60km stretch linking
Bukit Tarek in Selangor to
the Chubadak substations in
Kuala Lumpur.

The unfinished work invo
l ve d the installation of four
towers to complete the fourth
route that will channel electricity
to some 6.5 million households.

Che Khalib said the January
2005 blackout had cost losses
running into billions of ringgit.

The total load loss when
power was distrupted for up to
five hours then was 6,400MW,
affecting three million customer
s.

The country, Che Khalib
said, barely missed another
big power disaster on Feb 4
this year when one of TNB’s
three existing routes failed.

Fortunately, the incident
happened during a non-peak
period at 9am.

“Should this happen a few
hours later, a repeat of the Jan
13, 2005 blackout would have
been inevitable,” said TNB
vice-president of distribution
Ab’llah Mohd Salleh.

Ab’llah said if the CAR project
had been completed on
schedule, the addition of the
fourth high-capacity route
would have been able to carry
the excess power in place of
the lost circuits.

Che Khalib said the delay
had sharply increased the
CAR development cost.