Brief Blackout In The South Causes Confusion: Thailand

[webfact]

Brief blackout in the South causes confusion
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Most of the South was engulfed in darkness for 35 minutes from about 7.45pm Tuesday night following malfunctions at the main power station in Prachuap Khiri Khan's Kui Buri district.

The distribution of electricity resumes, first after around 35 minutes at certain locations, but most of the region are still in the dark even after two hours.

Initial reports quoting the Provincial Electricity Authorities said a malfunction had been reported at a power station in Trang, but the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) said the problems had occurred at the plant in Bang Saphan district.

Energy Minister Pongsak Ruktapongpisal said later that the plant in Kui Buri had stalled partially, which resulted in a huge drop in power distributed. He initially suspected it would take three to four hours for things to return to normal.

News of the blackout broke in social media before it was picked up and reported by the broadcast media. Many social-media postings put the blackout down to terrorist attacks in the deep South, causing confusion among netizens.

The Isra News Agency reported that volunteers in the deep South were also calling on residents to exercise extra caution, allegedly after security officials issued a warning of possible terror attacks.

Meanwhile, the power plat in Bang Saphan brought electricity back to all households after dispatching a number of mobile generators.


-- The Nation 2013-05-22

[webfact]

'Biggest blackout ever' hits Phuket and 13 other provinces

PHUKET: -- The 'biggest power outage ever' in Thailand blacked out 14 southern provinces Tuesday evening, plunging almost the entire South, including Phuket, into blackness for lengthy periods.

The outage occurred about 7pm, and the lights reportedly started coming back on again in certain areas at 8pm. But most of the tourist areas of Phuket were reportedly still in complete darkness two hours after the blackout began, and authorities said some areas might not get power before Wednesday morning.

Some lights were seen at 8.30pm in some areas of Phuket, Surat Thani and Hat Yai city.

There was no sign the outage was terrorist-related.

All provinces south of Surat Thani were affected, including Chumphon, Krabi, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Narathiwat, Pattani, Phang Nga, Phatthalung, Phuket, Ranong, Satun, Songkhla, Surat Thani, Trang and Yala.

Sirichai Maingram, president of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) Employees Union president, said the 500kV high-voltage cable in the central region was disconnected from the system.

Mr Sirichai said this was the biggest outage that ever occurred in the country.

The blackout was caused by a failure in the high voltage transmission power lines from the Central to the Southern region through Bang Saphan district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, a spokesman of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) said.

Egat Corporate Social Responsibility deputy governor and spokesperson Pongdit Pojana said all Egat power stations in the South were accelerating electricity output, including two diesel-powered plants in Surat Thani and Krabi, to make up for the lost energy to the grid. They accounted for 500 megawatts of a total demand of 2,500 in the region.

The technical cause of the blackout will be further examined, and officially announced later, he said.

Mr Pongdit said authorities were urgently repairing the faulty power transmission lines in Bang Saphan district Tuesday evening, and electricity was expected to return to normal late Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

Suthon Boonprasong, assistant governor to Egat’s Transmission System Operation, said as of 9.30pm electricity was already back to normal in 90% of the affected areas in the 14 provinces.

Namchai Lorwattanatrakul, governor of Provincial Electricity Authority, confirmed that a preliminary examination indicated the blackout first hit a 500-kilowatt power station at Bang Saphan district of Prachuap Khiri Khan, a major venue for distributing electricity to users in the southern provinces, and later caused widespread outage in other areas.


-- Phuket News 2013-05-22

[Bellweather]

The first story points to confusion as to where the problem originated and as someone pointed out in a post recently thailand wants to build and operate nuclear power stations. Ouch !

[keestha]

From the South (Phangnga): Right away it stroke me that this blackout was different than a "normal" one - instead of being cut off in one go, the power was fading away slowly.

[animatic]

5+ hours is not so short. We never got steady power till nearly 1 am.

Some people seemed to confuse generator powered hotel lights for PEA power.

[TomTao]

When chumphon blacked out I went upstairs and saw there were no lights anywhere within visual range, my wife called a relative in Lang Suan who said there was no electricity, then we knew it was a big blackout, came back and failed three times before it was properly restored.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

What a bunch of cocked up news reports...

The main power line to the South was "disconnected". This power plant had a "problem." No, that plant had a problem.

The morning after the event, still no clear or consistent explanation here from authorities.

And still no explanation of why EGAT and PEA are running so much power through just one line -- serving an entire section of the country -- without suitable redundancy.

[Pi Sek]

In Samui, mostly power cuts don't affect Phang Ka/Thong Krut/Taling Ngam as it does for the rest of the island because the sub-station is there. (Late last year most of Samui had no power for 3 days - Thong Krut and Phang Ka didn't have a problem.)

Last night power went down around 7pm. Mobile networks were down a lot too. I called a friend who lives in Bophut, power came back around 9-9.30 but Thong Krut was still black as night, and I went to sleep at around 10.30pm. I woke up at 5.30 this morning and power was on.

Somehow I don't think we've seen the last of this.

[evadgib]

I can feel a poll coming on...

"How many were off for 35 mins?"

"How many were off for 12 hrs?"

John Cleese will be along shortly with the giant obilisk he uses to silence Jehovah's witnesses

Edited May 22, 2013 by evadgib

[Mampara]

This is just the beginning, many more are to follow

[mineonunder]

This is just the beginning, many more are to follow

you say this on what authourity?

[keeniau96]

Here in Phuket it was total black for about three hours. The cause as reported in the more recent articles shows it to be a grid failure much like the one that happened on the East Coast of the USA around 1969. That one took about three days to deliver full recovery to all of the region. The Thai electric companies and authority seem to have handled this outage quite well, far better than Thais are usually capable of.

[Scott]

We are into one of those cycles of the sun that causes disturbances. Does that have anything to do with this blackout?

[GentlemanJim]

We are into one of those cycles of the sun that causes disturbances. Does that have anything to do with this blackout?

Unsure, but when that happens (not if) it will likely cause quite severe damage rather than a power trip and my understanding is that a fairly rapid fix will be unlikely.

My wife knows someone at the electricity department and after we realised the power cut was across the town she called her friend and the first thing they said was 'There has been a terrorist attack at one of the stations in the South'. Obviously no news to reflect that.

[animatic]

We are into one of those cycles of the sun that causes disturbances. Does that have anything to do with this blackout?

Unsure, but when that happens (not if) it will likely cause quite severe damage rather than a power trip and my understanding is that a fairly rapid fix will be unlikely.

My wife knows someone at the electricity department and after we realised the power cut was across the town she called her friend and the first thing they said was 'There has been a terrorist attack at one of the stations in the South'. Obviously no news to reflect that.

And I wonder what illegal/terrorist things took place while the power was out and the police were in distraction mode?

Yeah, I would imagine they won't initially admit to a terrorist group cutting the power.

One maybe two towers coming down under that 500kv line would do it.

Yes, no redundancy for a whole section of the country is cheap charlie stupid....

[clockman]

Never expect the truth. Because that means somebody is responsible! and we all know that anybody who should be responsible never is!

[chainarong]

I am not going to compare this against Nuclear power, as there is to many parameters that can cause a power outage, from grid system failure to lightning striking transformers, flooding and this can happen in any country , it's when power keeps going on and off 24/7 like in Myanmar, that's when you have to worry, although I would say that there's a lot of talk on Nuclear power, when they sit down with the professionals, in this field and they Analyse the parameters that have to be meet and the costs, maybe they will have a re-think , maybe. Meanwhile

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

My wife knows someone at the electricity department and after we realised the power cut was across the town she called her friend and the first thing they said was 'There has been a terrorist attack at one of the stations in the South'. Obviously no news to reflect that.

The varying and conflicting officials explanations of the cause thus far, all of them vague at best, give some credence to that as possible explanation.

If that were the case, though, I'm assuming at some point, somehow, somewhere, the news of such would leak out.

FWIW, I see other news saying there was an official government TV announcement last night claiming the outage was due to a transmission line problem, and not the "southern unrest." But there also continued to be talk of some problem at the power plant in Bang Saphan.

Edited May 22, 2013 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[toybits]

must be a kind of cyber attack on public utilities done by those !@#$!king Chi#%$^. Happened in the North as well. Todays news on Channel 3 TV - Sorayudt said it must have been something out of Lampang province. Black out was around 7 pm.

[webfact]

All 14 provinces of southern region hit by historic blackout
By English News

BANGKOK, May 22 -- All 14 provinces in Thailand's southern region were hit by a historic power outage Tuesday night after a transmission cable failure in Prachuap Khiri Khan cut off the electricity supply from the Central Region.

Electriciy Generating Authority of Thailand EGAT Deputy Governor-Transmission System Thana Putarungsi said that the power blackout was caused by a faulty high-voltage cable from Ratchaburi's Chom Bueng district to Bang Saphan district in Prachuap Khiri Khan, the main and only power transmission line from the Central region to the South.

He said southern region electricity use has grown by 10 per cent. Power generation in the southern provinces was insufficient to respond to the high demand and additional supply is needed from the Central region.

The malfunction of the transmission line disrupted the power supply and left the public in darkness for hours.

He said that electricity delivery has fully resumed to the southern provinces.

To deal with the blackout, he said EGAT power plants in Surat Thani and Krabi have boosted their electricity generation to full capacity to make up for the shortfall.

EGAT has also bought electricity from Malaysia while it repairs the power transmission lines in Bang Saphan district. Restoration was completed just before midnight.

Mr Thana admitted the blackout was the biggest in 30 years since the nationwide blackout in 1978.

He apologised to the public for the inconvenience and said an investigation would be carried out to find the cause of the faulty high-voltage cable.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters before leaving for Japan to attend forum on "The Future of Asia" that she has assigned Energy Minister Pongsak Ruktapongpisal to inspect blackout in the south and is seeking a prevention plan to avoid repetition of the incident. (MCOT online news)


-- TNA 2013-05-22

[whybother]

Army chief visits Pattani to inspect at risk areas for making security plan; power blackout unrelated to terrorism /MCOT

Great idea for them though. One little blast takes out electricity for the whole area they're fighting over.

[lee b]

I Cant belive this got so much attention. We are in a country where this is a normal thing? Right or wrong?

[GentlemanJim]

I Cant belive this got so much attention. We are in a country where this is a normal thing? Right or wrong?

Well as it's the biggest in 30 years I guess....wrong

We get local power cuts weekly but this was half the entire country.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Well, one of the news reports said 8 million people were affected by last night's Southern fiasco...

And the MCOT report just a few posts above here noted:

Mr Thana admitted the blackout was the biggest in 30 years since the nationwide blackout in 1978.

Yes, the same KINDS of things (various failures of various things) happen all the time.

But the magnitude of this one pretty well exceeds the norm.

[webfact]

EGAT determines cause of Southern blackout

BANGKOK, 22 May 2013 (NNT) - The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand stated that last night’s large-scale blackout in the South was caused by the overloading of main transmission lines.

According to Deputy EGAT governor Thana Phuttarangsi, due to the region’s excessive demand for electricity supply, additional power had to be transferred from Ratchaburi plants to the southern line. Once the system detected overloads, it automatically disconnected circuits to protect the power lines.

While power stations in Surat Thani and a few other provinces had the capacity to produce back-up energy supply, others could not, making it necessary for EGAT to rely on power imported from Malaysia.

Repair work was carried out in Prachuap Kirikhan late last night and power was restored at 11.45PM.

Mr Thana pointed out that its electricity grid was unable to keep up with rising demand in the southern region, where major tourist destinations such as Phuket and Krabi are located. He noted that the extensive blackout is the biggest outage in the past 30 years.

EGAT made known that in order to prevent a repeat of the outage, a power plant is being planned for Songkla, which is expected to be completed in April of next year. Another coal power plant is also being considered for Krabi in a bid to meet growing demand for energy.


-- NNT 2013-05-22

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Sorry, but the explanation above sounds a bit off...

Either EGAT is admitting they can't manage their grid and its interconnections properly, or.... something else was going on.

It's not like power usage in the South suddenly spiked at 7 pm last night to previously unreached levels...

[Stocky]

Brief!

Hat Yai was out for 3 hours.

[drdoom6996]

"News of the blackout broke in social media before it was picked up and reported by the broadcast media. Many social-media postings put the blackout down to terrorist attacks in the deep South"

This sounds just like all the false speculation that goes on the Thai Visa pages every day from the now it alls that need to go home.

[Rykbanlor]

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/631158-thai-energy-minister-raises-concern-about-electricity-reserves-on-april-9-and-10/?hl=energy+minister#entry6282549

[Rykbanlor]

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/631158-thai-energy-minister-raises-concern-about-electricity-reserves-on-april-9-and-10/?hl=energy+minister#entry6282549

Maybe related? It was on their minds only last month it seems