Hong Kong’s reputation marred by power outages
- Hong Kong rightly takes pride in having one of the world’s most efficient and reliable electricity supplies but recent interruptions of service leave city with a black eye
The government has a short fuse when it comes to outages that leave people without power. Hence “shock” and “disappointment” with one of the city’s two energy suppliers over two close but unrelated incidents.
People tend to take electricity supply for granted. It is important therefore that CLP sheds more light on two outages in the same area.
CLP and Hong Kong Electric have a reputation for reliability, which is paramount in a crowded, high-rise international city where electricity is critical for commerce and comfort.
It is understandable that officials should reflect public concerns and confusion after a second electricity outage struck in the same locality in a week, affecting hundreds of residents at a public housing estate in Tsing Yi.
The Environment and Ecology Bureau said it was “extremely concerned and shocked”. It said Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan had expressed his “great disappointment” to CLP Power managing director Joseph Law Ka-chun.
A bureau spokesman said the government had ordered the company to undertake a comprehensive review of its power supply system, which covers Kowloon, the New Territories and most outlying islands.
According to CLP, an 11,000-volt underground cable failed in one of its substations, cutting power to 388 customers for almost 90 minutes at On Mei House in Cheung On Estate at 9.38am on Sunday.
The estate is about a block away from Nga Ying Chau Street, the source of another outage on New Year’s Day that trapped more than a dozen residents in lifts and set off fire alarms in several districts.
Hong Kong’s CLP told to complete inspections this month after 2 power problems
These incidents follow more serious recent outages, such as a power dip at a Hong Kong Electric switching station at Cyberport in Pok Fu Lam that left more than 100 people trapped in lifts, and a blackout for hours of more than 160,000 households in northwestern Hong Kong two years ago after a bridge carrying high-voltage CLP cables caught fire in Yuen Long.
Hong Kong cherishes its reputation for reliable power supply, under the scheme of control which assures the suppliers a return on capital invested.
Repeated outages, however, do nothing for it and once again raise questions about whether systemic problems need to be addressed.
