Compensation to consumer due to power utility company's fault

I was combing for information in the Electricity Supply Act 1990 to see if there is a clause to give consumers the rights to claim from the utility companies - TNB, SESB, SEB - for electrical appliances and equipment damages due to voltage surges and dips in the power supply system.

I am currently working on a claim against SESB for faulty equipment due to over voltage at their 415V LV supply system with no favourable result so far. I could not find the pertinent clause, but would appreciate it very much if anyone can point me to it.


Go ahead, make the claim

Can you actually claim for damaged equipment, and in what circumstances can you possibly win a case against these power utilities? Well, based on the following cases, you may have a chance:


Case #1: In 2011, Sarawak Energy Berhad paid RM1,695.40 in compensation to two consumers




Case #2: In 2012, Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd promised to investigate and consider compensation


The best option, as it seem, is to go to the Consumer Claims Tribunal and provide to them as much details as possible, but most importantly the followings:

• Claimant's detailed information,
• Police Report,
• List of damaged equipment,
• Original receipt of equipment repair, etc

In the SEB case, the consumers have written earlier to the power utility company but their complaints went unanswered and that was when they decided to approach Consumer Claims Tribunal Malaysia.

So there. Know your rights and play your role, and plug some holes in your pocket.

TheGreenMechanics: The Acts pertaining to electricity supply seem to be not so friendly when it come helping the consumers. Aren't consumers the backbone for the existence of the power utility companies?

Someone can point me to a clause in the act that can save my day, please?

Power outage: SESB vs SEB

I read with great interest a comment made by one of Daily Express readers published on July 22, 2012. If you still have your weekend copy, you can find it in the forum section.

A comparison was made on the two separate power outages in Sabah and Sarawak which happened in April 2012 and July 2012 respectively. It stresses the big gap in terms of how the situations were handled and of how much SESB is alleged to be lagging behind SEB. An interesting compilation is summarised as follow:

Daily Express, July 22

Just to clarify, SEB is Sarawak Energy Berhad, not as quoted, and it is the holding company that owns SESCO which generate, transmit, distribute and supply electricity throughout Sarawak. In a way, SEB is like TNB while SESB is like SESCO. But, leaving the organisational structure alone, every utility company has the same responsibility, that is to give the utmost care and service to its customers. After all what is quality if the bar on customer satisfaction is never reached.

I will leave it to you the readers to decipher the above information but to be fair to SESB, they did apologise promptly the next day during the 30 April 2012 massive power outage. The press release to offer the consumers thorough explanation was made much later and I suppose the writer was refering to this one when quoting '24 days after the event'.

Furthermore, 'Other event' should include a consequential load shedding excersice many hours after the initial 16-hours power outage on April 30. SESB was struggling to stabilise the power supply to a number of bigger consumers in the West Coast, particularly in Tuaran area. In our case there were places (end users) that had their power supply normalised (totally) the next day.


People can give explanation and choose to disagree, but from the comparison table, we can - without digging further - make some conclusions, or at least perception, among others:

1. Capacitive Voltage Transformers, CVT, contrary to what SESB mentioned in its press release, can cause little disruption to the supply of power.
2. We know that SESB is continuously upgrading its transmission/generation capacity, but we perceive here that compared to Sarawak and West Malaysia, it still has a lot to catch up.
3. Excess in power generated does not guarantee fail-safe operations. SESCO has ample safety margin in its power generation capacity but other factors will still cause outage. Note however, that they will have the luxury of better back up from other sources. Hence, the lesser power disruptions.
4. I have this nagging feeling that we in Sabah are 'fire fighting' rather than doing Planned Preventive Maintenance. The SEB case showed that we can carry out maintenance (unplanned emergency, or planned parts replacement) without putting the whole power network out of service. In other words, don't put the whole State without power just because of one small equipment failure.

A copy of the SESB press release pertaining to the massive power outage has been stored in this blog for future reference.

Let's hope for a blackout-free weekend ahead.


**UPDATE**: Responses by SESB as well as the general public - in the internet or print media - will be quoted/recorded in the Comment section. Do check it out.