Sweaty residents turn up heat on HKE after outage

Thousands of residents in parts of Hong Kong Island were upset at the 45-minute power outage in the early hours yesterday as they sweltered without air conditioners and electric fans.

Power giant Hongkong Electric said the voltage dip that caused the outage was reported at 12.49am, but power was fully restored at 1.37am after emergency handling.

The power supplier for Hong Kong Island and Lamma said the disruption was caused by an equipment fault during circuit maintenance but did not say whether it was triggered by faulty maintenance or human error.

HKE said the incident mainly affected Southern, Eastern, Wan Chai, Pok Fu Lam and Central districts.

The company apologized for the inconvenience, adding it will investigate the cause and submit reports to authorities later.

But residents were unhappy at the power firm's performance, with some commenting: "All they do is raise the tariff."

Some complained about waking up in the middle of the night feeling steaming hot, because their air-conditioners and fans shut down as temperatures reached 29.9 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.

Neighbors woke up to darkened corridors and lifts that had stopped working.

A resident of Sham Wan Towers in Ap Lei Chau, Yan, said the air-cons and wi-fi ground to a halt, and the 45-minute blackout made him hot.

Yan said he found the whole estate as well as the nearby Lei Tung Estate were affected by the blackout.

A Lei Tung Estate resident heard neighbors calling for help, saying the estate was thrown into chaos.

Some called the HKE hotline but were unable to reach anyone, despite "dialing more than 50 times."

A North Point resident said her apartment was also affected, but it was fortunate that the power resumed in seconds.

Dozens of traffic lights across Hong Kong Island resumed operations near the end of the morning rush hour yesterday, as the Transport Department urged drivers to pay extra attention when crossing junctions. Edward Lo Wai-chau, from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers' electrical division, believed the incident was not caused by heavy power usage because the power demand was low around midnight.

It was possible that a component broke during the maintenance or the incident could have been caused by human error, he said, urging HKE to enhance equipment maintenance.

Lo also said a lack of engineering talent in recent years might have led to the degradation of service quality.

In a separate outage, more than 20 shops in Hong Kong Station plunged into darkness around noon, with some being forced to suspend operations.

Other shops continued to operate in the dark despite lights and refrigerators being off. Electronic payment systems were unavailable.

MTR Corp said the power supply to some facilities, including lights, escalators, air conditioners and shops at Kowloon and Hong Kong stations, was affected at 12.08pm yesterday. Power was restored to normal at 1.25pm and 2.50pm, respectively, after engineers reset the power supply. Train services were not affected.

"Initial investigation showed the incident was irrelevant to the power supply failure of HKE," it said.

The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department received HKE's report about the incident at 1.27am and said it has been following up with the power supplier since.

"The EMSD has asked HKE to find out the cause as soon as possible, and hand in a detailed report in four weeks," a spokesman said.

wallis.wang@singtaonewscorp.com