BANGKOK, June 3 –– A Thai government fact-finding committee concluded that the electrical power blackout in 14 southern provinces on May 21 was not caused by human error but by force majeur.
Deputy permanent secretary for energy Kurujit Nakornthap speaking in his capacity as head of the panel said that the committee concluded that the power outage was the result of several factors, including a lightning strike on a high-power transmission line and the malfunction of the emergency system.
He said the results would be forwarded to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) board of directors chairperson Anchalee Chavanich, and said that preventive measures must be prepared to avoid a recurrence of a similar incident.
Mr Kurujit said that lightning hit the 500 kV transmission line at 17.26pm on May 21 at the same time that another 500 kV transmission line was under maintenance. EGAT opted to try to maintain power system for the whole region and not to cut electricity in any particular province. EGAT then switched to use 230 kV and 115 kV transmission lines to supply power to the southern region.
He said the electricity demand in the South reached 2,200 megawatts while the five power stations in the region could only generate 1,600 megawatts in total. Some 430-480 megawatts of electricity from the central region was supplied to meet the demand.
To make up for the power shortage after the incident, EGAT asked to buy power from Malaysia under a cooperation agreement which indicated that Thailand could buy electricity from Malaysia for up to 400 megawatts.
EGAT asked Malaysia to supply 380 megawatts of power but the Malaysian switch system experienced a problem and the power was cut off after only two seconds of transmission, he said.
Moreover, he said, the load shedding between the EGAT and the Provincial Electricity Authority of Thailand (PEA), which was under the supervision of the PEA, did not work properly as planned so that the PEA could not cut the electricity at certain areas.
For safety reason, he said, the five power stations in the South automatically released themselves from the system, and all 14 provinces were then hit by the blackout at 18.52pm.
