KUCHING: Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB) is closely monitoring the performance of its rural lines including those in Spaoh.
SEB has put in place immediate and medium-term reinforcement plans to provide better supply reliability to the area, it said in a statement yesterday.
The ongoing Pan Borneo Highway works are contributing to an increase in instances of supply interruptions in Spaoh, thus adding to the challenge of maintaining the long overhead lines that supply the rural town.
Spaoh, located at the end of 75km-long overhead lines, was formerly only supplied from Engklili’s 33kV substation, and this was causing the rural town to be especially vulnerable to interruptions at any point along the stretch.
The long lines are already susceptible to external disturbances such as adverse weather conditions, animal intrusions and other technical challenges.
Based on the outage report for 2018, 14 planned and unplanned outages were caused by Pan Borneo Highway related works, it said.
A further 13 interruptions were attributed to external disturbances to the lines with 13 outages caused by equipment failure and planned shutdown for maintenance, it added.
To improve reliability of supply for Spaoh, SEB said it had allocated RM163.78 million of reinforcement projects in 2017. The projects are being rolled out in phases.
These include the addition of supply sources via the 11kV overhead lines project to connect Spaoh town from Tanu and Debak lines. This RM780,000 project was completed last Feb 16, meaning Spaoh now has two new supply sources, from Tanu and Debak, thus improving supply reliability to the area.
Another major reinforcement project to further enhance the supply reliability for Spaoh is the construction of the RM163 million Serudit 275kV Extra High Voltage (EHV) substation project scheduled for completion in June 2020.
This EHV substation will be the main injection point for Spaoh, Betong and Pusa, in addition to the Engklili 33kV substation.
SEB is committed to ensuring supply reliability for all its customers and is taking the necessary measures to improve its system performance in both urban and rural areas.
For any enquiries, customers can contact Sarawak Energy Customer Care Centre at 1300 88 3111 or email at customercare@sarawakenergy.com.my for assistance. Customers can also report outages through Sarawak Energy mobile app “SEB cares” which can be downloaded from Android’s Google Play Store as well as the Apple App Store for iOS.
