Sabah hopes to reduce power cuts caused by insulation problems by 30%-50% in three years

KOTA KINABALU: Power disruptions in Sabah involving uninsulated electrical conductors are expected to drop by 30% to 50% by 2025.

Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) chief executive officer Mohd Yaakob Jaafar said from studies the company conducted, it was found that each customer suffered 332 minutes or more than five hours of cumulative power disruption on average last year.

“From this, we found that 49% of 11kV medium voltage conductors in Sabah are not insulated,” he said in a statement Friday (March 18).

This meant that the conductors were prone to malfunction and could easily cause power supply disruptions.

To solve this problem, Mohd Yaakob said SESB was aggressively upgrading the conductors involved and projected a 30%-50% decrease in related incidents in three years.

He said the upgrading work was, however, lengthy and expensive and was being carried out in stages.

“For short-term and immediate solutions, SESB is using a 'rent management’ concept where concessionaires are responsible for maintaining conductors in areas that often suffer from power disruptions such as Tuaran, Keningau, Kota Marudu dan Ranau,” he said.

Mohd Yaakob added that other approaches were being evaluated, such as setting up a special task force to solve unique issues faced by particular areas.

He said an allocation of RM128mil until 2025 had been made to upgrade the affected conductors while RM170mil was set aside for other works including repairs, also until that year.

He revealed that other causes of medium-voltage power disruptions included tree branches that came in contact with electrical conductors (35%), animal intrusion (16%) and bad weather (11%).

For low-voltage power disruptions, some 25% was caused by illegal connections, he noted.