Sunday's blackout

Sunday's blackout

It is still hard to believe that the mere malfunctioning of
three electronic cards worth about US$33,000 at the Gandul
transmission and load-control station could have brought down
almost the entire power grid in Java and Bali for 10 hours.

But that was the technical trouble which the president of
state-owned electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara
(PLN), Djiteng Marsudi, cited on Sunday night as the main cause
of the blackout. This simple explanation might cause even greater
worries among the public: Is the Java-Bali power interconnection
system so vulnerable?

As Djiteng said, technical troubles or a natural disaster
could disable any power system anywhere in the world. But
niggling questions arise: Why did the electronic cards wear out
eight years earlier than their technically guaranteed operational
life? Why did PLN take so long to replace them on Sunday? We
also wonder as to whether the power interconnection system,
designed to improve the economic dispatch of electricity from
widespread generation plants, could not be improved further to
avoid a domino effect of technical trouble at a transmission
station.

The way PLN addressed complaining customers during Sunday's
blackout also shows how totally unprepared the public utilities
company was in coping with such an emergency.

The power failure began at 10 a.m. but no official explanation
was issued by PLN until Djiteng talked to the press late in the
evening. An early explanation would have helped a lot in
preparing the public to cope with the problem. Coordination with
police headquarters also would have minimized the traffic chaos
in major cities.

The manners in which PLN treated its customers did not help
increase our confidence in its reliability. The public utilities
company instead remains infested with the disease inherent within
a monopoly: disregard of customers. And the public has no
alternative but to accept PLN's shortcomings. Neither do the
customers have a legal course to sue PLN for damages caused by
a power failure.

The latest power failure once again raises the issue as to
whether deregulation and privatization in the electricity sector
should not be limited to generation, as it is now, but perhaps
should be extended to power distribution as well.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy should thoroughly investigate
Sunday's power disruption, especially since the last massive
blackout took place as recently as November, 1994. The massive
power outage in mid-January, 1992 could be seen as an act of God
since it was caused by a lightning bolt. We have often been
commended for our ability to build big, sophisticated facilities
but we still often neglect the vital importance of maintenance.
We have yet to learn the urgency of setting and upholding well-
designed safety measures.

Electricity is vital to humans, especially in urban areas. And
the more advanced the stage of economic development becomes, the
heavier the reliance of the country on electricity becomes. The
traffic chaos, disrupted production schedules and manufacturing
processes at factories as well as disturbed commercial activities
are only some of the losses incurred by the power failure.

There could be another grave impact of the latest blackout:
declining investors' confidence in the country's power system.
This may increase the capital costs of investment ventures
because more commercial and industrial establishments may need to
set up captive power units of their own.

It would be a big problem both for the country's economic
competitiveness and for PLN itself if declining confidence in the
reliability of its power supply forces an increasing number of
investors to rely on generators. In the 1980s there was an acute
supply shortage, but PLN's problem now is how to sell its large
quantity of unused electricity. PLN's supply capacity will
greatly increase within the next three to five years when most of
the 24 private power generation projects come on stream. PLN's
top priority therefore should be the security and quality of
supply. All our grand plans to leap into the information age and
the respectable upper middle-income group of countries would be
ineffective if we are still saddled with an archaic power
transmission system.