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.