PLN Ensures West Sumatra's Main Substations Are Powered

The West Sumatra Distribution Main Unit (UID) of PLN has confirmed that all substations in the province are energised following a system disruption that caused power outages since Friday night, 22 May 2026.

“As of 05:00 WIB, 60 per cent of the system has recovered and we are continuing efforts to restore normal operation to 100 per cent,” said Ajrun Karim, General Manager of PLN UID Sumbar, when contacted in Padang on Saturday, 23 May 2026, as reported by Antara.

Although 21 substations have successfully re-energised, 175 feeders (feeder lines) are still down out of a total of 394. These feeders are spread across Padang City, Padang Pariaman Regency, Tanah Datar Regency, Pasaman, Pasaman Barat, Lima Puluh Kota, Payakumbuh City, Padang Panjang City, Solok, Solok Selatan, Sijunjung, and Dharmasraya.

The local PLN branch said it would restore the power system as quickly as possible to return to normal. It also reiterated that Sumbar remains safe, particularly for low- and medium-voltage networks. However, field teams are still working to normalise several feeders. “All substations are energised; the remaining work is the loading at each feeder point,” he said.

Regarding the main cause of the outage in West Sumatra on Friday night at around 18:44 WIB, the agency has not yet provided further details. However, the preliminary hypothesis is that the disturbance originated from Jambi Province. In addition to Sumbar, outages also occurred in Aceh, North Sumatra and Riau.

Since the incident, PLN has dispatched technical teams to inspect all systems and networks and to trace the cause of the outage. PLN urged the public to stay calm and not to panic. Information on handling the outage will be updated periodically via the PLN Mobile app and the PLN 123 contact centre.

Meanwhile, Asna, a resident of Bukittinggi, said power was restored between 01:00 and 03:00 WIB. She hopes the situation will return to full normality. ‘At 01:00 I checked the power wasn’t on, but by 03:00 WIB it was on,’ she said.