Sabah power blackout due to Shutdown of 4 turbines by IPP

It's good that Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) has finally came out with a media briefing regarding the state-wide blackout on January 17, 2014. People have been speculating about why and what caused the second massive blackout in 2 years. The previous one was on April 30, 2012.

The slight delay did not help the utility in putting a stop to allegations after allegations from many quarters, some to the point of slandering. Just navigate to the 'News' dropdown menu in the SESB website and you will see I meant. For me, I prefer to wait and get the full pictures from SESB's own press release like the one in 2012.

One of the power plants belonging to Ranhill, located in Teluk Salut. Source: RPSB pdf

IPP to blame for the blackout?

From what was reported today by the local dailies, it seem the blame is on the Independent Power Producer's (IPP). Well it depends on how you look at it.

If one day you find your tap went dry, who will you blame? The Water Department? The water concessionaires who manage the water supply for the department? The Operators who operate the treatment plant? The broken-down pumps? Where does the blame-game stop? Someone has to take the responsibility, or, the blame if you like.

SESB was quoted by Daily Express as saying that the IPP's decision to shut down its gas turbines for safety reasons caused the massive power failure in Sabah and Labuan on that fateful day.


Why and how it happened

Preliminary findings revealed by SESB on Wednesday were that Ranhill's power plant decided to shut down the gas turbines after encountering a technical problem, causing power to fluctuate and trip.

IPP informed SESB that its "diverter damper", the door which covers the gas connection from the turbines to power up a steam turbine at the plant, could not be shut. Out of fear as smoke was continuously coming out from the plant, they decided to shut down the two gas turbines.

In the report, Managing Director Abdul Razak Sallim said the blackout episode could be divided into two events, (1) being a residual overcurrent protection at 10.30am where power was stabilised and (2) a sharp drop in power transmission at 11.11am.

He said in the first event, power generation had stabilised to 633MW, while demand stood at 585.1MW with an excess margin of 48.5MW.

But in the second event which caused the total blackout, power generation stood only at 525MW, while demand remained at 585MW, causing a margin deficiency of (-) 60MW, the problem of which was traced to the Ranhill Power Plant.


SESB not in a position to compensate consumers

The blackout is reported to have left the utility firm with about RM2 million in losses. While it affected more than 500,000 consumers statewide, SESB said it is also a victim of circumstances, and still operating in the red.

So, SESB cannot offer a discount nor reduce the newly-revised tariff as demanded by an opposition Assemblywoman, Christina Liew who earlier said SESB should give a 30 per cent discount.


What's next

A task force committee will, among others, determine whether the issue had been caused by technical or human error. The detailed report would be forwarded to the Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry to decide whether to launch an elaborate investigation.

Will Ranhill Power Plant risk a revocation of its licence by the Energy Commission?

"Under the Electric Supply Act 1994 all licenses to IPPs are issued by the Commission, if there are situations where the IPPs can assist supply in times of crisis and had received instructions to do so, but did not do it, their licences can be revoked." - Energy Commission West Coast Areas Director Nazlin Ab Alim Sidiri


The way forward for SESB as to what I understand from my readings:

• For SESB, TNB and Energy Commission to work together to strengthen its 21 fail-safe system and other efforts to ensure there will be no repeat of a total blackout.

• For the government to continuously provide allocations (and perhaps allocate more now) to set up a redundancy system or a back-up power line that can serve as a back-up when the main cables are down to improve the State's System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI).

TheGreenMechanics: Two state-wide blackouts in a span of less than 2 years is not good a statistics at all. Not good at all! But in this particular case, SESB can't be totally blamed; to certain extent their hands are also tied with regards to control over the many IPPs in the state.

That said, for the sake of making good what has been pledged to the people, the government, especially the federal government, which has more grip on the parent company, TNB, must take some drastic and bold decisions. If it is just fund you are talking about, then reprioritise!

We cannot just continue to say "This is Sabah, we have to live with it" and accept our fate as so!


Source:
Daily Express - read here
Bernama - read here
Free Malaysia Today - read here

Worst blackout in history - Over 600 million people in India affected

Nation-wide blackout, affected more than half the population.

A familiar news to you? I bet my money you won't be totally surprised (although perhaps totally annoyed) by what happened in India yesterday.

This was the worst blackout in the second most populous nation's history involving more than half the country, as an electrical grid collapse in 14 states - then spread to a total 19. The incident deprived more than 600 million people of power. Some journalists put the figure as 620 to 670million people.


Massive traffic jam in New Delhi, following a power outage (one of the world's worst) that spread over half of India, July 31, 2012. Photo: AP/Rajest Kumar Singh


It is that bad, but how bad?

If you live in Sabah, Malaysia, you will understand how it feels to be deprived of power supply on a frequent basis. Recently in April 2012, we experienced a state-wide blackout for almost the whole day and in some areas, power was only restored completely the next day.

One hour of blackout is bad. What more with going through the day in total darkness; and added to that, a bonus of another half a day during the next.

In India's case, many were still without power on the second day. The blackout, one of the largest in global history by the number of people affected, dramatically underlined the concerns industry leaders have raised for years — that the nation's horribly inefficient power sector is dragging on the economy and could undermine India's longer-term ambition to become an industrialised nation.


What caused the blackout?

The power grid collapsed because some states apparently drew more power than they were authorised to do to meet the rising demand during the summer.

According to NDTV, the blackout was allegedly triggered after four states - Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan drew much more than their assigned share of power. Punjab and Uttar Pradesh have denied they exceeded their limit, though. Uttar Pradesh is said to over-drew its quota from the Northern Grid by 1200 MW, nearly a third of what a city like Delhi is entitled to in a day.

Blackouts are a frequent occurrence in many Indian cities because of shortage of power supply and an old-fashioned electricity grid. Too bad, this the common excuse/explanation offered by the power utilities everywhere. That's us included.


And its implication?

Nothing!

There is no need to even look at 'what would its implication be' unless people start looking at the underlying problems/issues, such as what the New York Times reported:

[...] For a country considered a rising economic power, Blackout Tuesday — which came only a day after another major power failure — was an embarrassing reminder of the intractable problems still plaguing India: inadequate infrastructure, a crippling power shortage and, many critics say, a yawning absence of governmental action and leadership.

India’s coalition government, already battered for its stewardship of a wobbling economy, again found itself on the defensive, as top ministers could not definitively explain what had caused the grid failure or why it had happened on consecutive days. Theories for the extraordinarily extensive blackout across much of northern India included excessive demands placed on the grid from certain regions, due in part to low monsoon rains that forced farmers to pump more water to their fields, and the less plausible possibility that large solar flares had set off a failure.

By Tuesday evening, power had been restored in most regions, and many people in major cities barely noticed the disruption, because localized blackouts are so common that many businesses, hospitals, offices and middle-class homes are equipped with backup diesel fuel generators.
“This is a huge failure,” said Prakash Javadekar, a spokesman for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. “It is a management failure as well as a failure of policy. It is policy paralysis in the power sector.” [...]

Time to reflect

The situation and power supply issue in Malaysia, and particularly in Sabah is somewhat similar in the India case in the sense that we are facing shortage of supply and the generally antiquated electricity grid/equipment. We can always give excuses and say that we fare better when bench-marked against India but that would be more of a 'feel-good' kind of assessment rather than the absolute meaning of the word 'better'.

It's time to be firm and aggressive in dealing with power supply problems. Allocate more fund in the coming budget preparation as electricity is now a need rather than want.

SESB offers explaination on the 30 April 2012 total blackout

I would like to share what SESB explained in detail in one of the local dailies which is not made available in its website www.sesb.com.my. Some slight changes made on the text to simplify the article, but leaving the clarity and meaning intact.

Formally expressing its sincere apology, the company through its MD highlighted four significant aspects of the incident, namely:

1. What triggered the incident?
2. Why the 66kV Capacitive Voltage Transformer (CVT) failed?
3. Why it took a long time to restore supply in some areas?
4. The SAIDI figure integrity.

Typical 132kV main intake station (Pencawang Masuk Utama, PMU)

What triggered the incident?

The disruption to the supply system was initiated by a failure of a 66kV CVT at the Main Intake Station (PMU) Penampang at 3.23am. This had in turn caused cascading trippings to 2 of the anchor power stations in the West Coast totalling 290MW out of the 550MW load at the time of the incident. These had caused the relatively small capacity generating sets running in the East Coast at that time to experience overloading and their protection systems tripped them off also.

With the tripping of the 2 anchor power stations in the West Coast which represent >50% of the demand at the time of incident and the subsequent protective trippings of the small power stations in the East Coast had caused the Grid frequency to plunge to a critical level that eventually brought down the whole Grid, i.e. blackout. This is a standard fail-safe mechanism designed for any Grid operation to prevent more widespread damage to the other components under similar circumstances.


Why the 66kV CVT failed?

Having studied and analysed the event log available at the SESB State Load Despatch Centre (SLDC) in Penampang by the engineers from TNB and SESB, it was found out that the particular CVT had experienced an intermittent and transient over-voltage. Unfortunately the intermittent and transient over-voltage which occurred in milliseconds was not readily detectable as it is not a standard power utility practice to install a real time monitoring facility for this type of equipment even for some bigger power utility entities. This had therefore been diagnosed to be as the reason for the CVT failure.

For the record, the failure of this particular CVT was the one and only incident in the 24 years of its installation. The CVT had been religiously maintained in accordance to the standard and mandatory requirement for such installation among which are:

i)   Last preventive maintenance, PPM: 2009 (5-yearly interval)
ii)  Last routine maintenance: 4 April 2012 (monthly)
iii) Last condition-based maintenance (thermo-scan and ultrasound): 9 March 2012 (6-monthly interval)

All the results from the latest maintenance activity as above had shown no anomalies. SESB also highlighted that the size of this CVT is of no significant relevance in the way it affects the Grid System operation because the manner in which an equipment failure affects the Grid System operation also depends on many other factors such as generation capacity, power transfer from one point to another within the Grid, generation balance within the Grid, the fault level it triggered and the generator assigned as the system frequency control at the time of incident besides not forgetting the exercise of a prudent economic despatch regime.

SESB said that it is definitely not an apple to apple comparison to say that the CVT to the Grid System operation is the same as a compass to a ship. It is more like a choked fuel filter on an engine of the ship which will cause the engine to stall and leaving the ship immobilised and stranded in the open seas until the engine is operational again.


Why it took a long time to restore supply in some areas?

As part of SESB's standard operating procedure, SOP, under such a situation, an established Emergency Response Plan (ERP) was immediately activated with the Managing Director or the Senior General manager (asset Management) being the Commander and the General Manager (System Operation) will act as the overall coordinator for the Grid System restoration.

Under such conditions the Grid Operation will be split into 6 independent islanding operations to facilitate safe, orderly and speedy restorations. The 6 'islands' are Patau, Pangi, Salut, Melawa, Sandakan and Tawau. This was what had been activated during the incident on the 30th April 2012. The extent in which supply restoration can be achieved in these separate independent islands depends primarily on the generation capacity compared to the load demands within the island.

If the generation capacity far exceeds the load demands then a safe, full and speedy restoration could be achieved. Conversely, the island in which the generation capacity is lower than the load demands, at best only partial restoration could be achieved in a safe manner. Full supply restoration could only be achieved once all the independent islands are safely connected to the Grid again with all identified generator achieved full and stable operations.

During the incident on 30th April, the first partial area restored was in Tawau at 4.20am, while the last 11kV feeder restored was in Balung, Tawau at 7.47pm. The main reason for the long delay to achieve full Grid operation was due to some of the generators had unfortunately not been able to achieve full, safe and stable operation faster. For this, a further analysis had been commissioned by both TNB and SESB engineers to ascertain the root cause which will also cover all aspect of generator start-up requirement such as, among others, auxiliary relay settings, gas supply conditions and gas to distillate change-over facilities on the relevant power stations, both which belongs to SESB and the IPPs.


The SAIDI figure integrity

Find out how to calculate SAIDI in my previous article.

SESB is required by Energy Commission Malaysia (EC), through regulatory compliance of one of the License Conditions, to submit reports on supply status on a daily basis. The actual official figure for SAIDI announced by SESB from time to time is that which had been endorsed by Energy Commission. Only EC can certify certain SAIDI figure to be officially taken as true number.

It should be noted that SAIDI is just one of the internationally accepted measure for electricity supply performance. Electricity supply performance is also the result of the existence of adequate basic infrastructure such as logistically balanced anchor generation sources and capacity, strong complete-loop transmission network as well as distribution infrastructure. Hence, highlighting the persistent efforts by SESB to implement projects in the East Coast to help create generating balance in the Grid System.


Prevention of recurrence of similar fault

To prevent future happenings of similar incident, SESB with the technical collaborations from experts in TNB had embarked to re-assess the network defence system to effectively and efficiently match the ever increasing demand in Sabah

Date published: 24th May 2012
Newspaper: Daily Express, Sabah