Power restored to most parts of Sarawak

KUCHING: Power supply has been restored to most of Sarawak, which was earlier affected by a blackout from the Saturday evening.

More than half of the state was plunged into darkness in the incident.

In a statement issued around 9.30pm, Sarawak Energy Bhd (SEB) said power to most areas was restored within two hours.

Electricity supply to places like Sibu resumed within half-an-hour of the incident, which hit just after 6.30pm.

"Power supply to parts of Kuching was restored within an hour," said SEB,

It said that the Kemana to Selangau 275 kV lines, which is near Bintulu, experienced a "double circuit trip" causing the outage.

"The SEB technical team is currently focussing all its efforts on addressing the issue. The affected lines were 're-energised' in an hour with customer load progressively restored starting 7pm," it said.

The SEB also said to improve overall system reliability, a 500kV transmission "backbone" from Bintulu to Kuching was being built, which was expected to be completed by the middle of this year.