Blackout: TNB says swift recovery proves national grid's reliability

Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) assured that the country’s national grid has been proven to be reliable and stable as electricity supply was restored a short while after the widespread power outage this afternoon.

“We managed to resolve the problem of power disruption within a reasonable period of time and in fact, there were some areas that recovered as quickly as 20 minutes after the supply was cut off.

“Supply restoration could be implemented efficiently due to the result of TNB’s continuous investment in modernising the grid, including digitalising it so that the supply network is more stable, flexible, and consistent,” said TNB CEO Baharin Din.

In a statement today, he explained that the issue at the North Yong Peng Main Entrance Substation did not involve any fire and that the substation is now fully operational again.

TNB earlier said they managed to fully restore electricity supply to all areas experiencing power outages at 3.02pm.

"Most of the affected areas were successfully restored in stages as early as 20 minutes after the disruption occurred as a result of the continuous efforts of the TNB technical team.

"TNB's investigation found that the supply disruption that started at 12:39pm was caused by a fault in one of the equipment at the Main Entrance Substation Yong Peng North in Yong Peng, Johor," it said in a statement.

This resulted in load-shedding of 2.2GW which is 10 percent of the total supply demand in Peninsular Malaysia.

Load-shedding is when electricity is deliberately cut off, generally to prevent the failure of the entire system when demand starts to strain capacity.

"We apologise for any inconvenience experienced by users during this supply disruption," the power company added.

Earlier today, a wide range of areas around the country, particularly in the Klang Valley, was hit by a blackout.

This had a spillover effect of disrupting services such as traffic lights and airline travel.

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