More heat on CLP after another outage

CLP Power Hong Kong should hire an independent consultant to review its power sag and outage incidents over the past three years, the environment minister says, after part of Wong Tai Sin was plunged into darkness for more than four hours on Wednesday night, affecting some 2,250 households.

Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan yesterday met with CLP managing director Joseph Law Ka-chun, requesting the company to identify problems in its management system to avoid such incidents in the future.

"The frequency of voltage dips and power supply interruptions has led to concerns about CLP's service quality," Tse said.

He said the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department will hire an independent consultant to submit a report to the government within a year. Areas of note would be identifying the causes for the outages, proposing improvement measures and reviewing the power system.

The department has also requested that CLP submit a report on the incident within four weeks.

The government proposed last month to add extra penalty charges on major incidents to the scheme of control agreements, a reward-penalty mechanism signed with CLP to regulate the electricity supplier.

A partial outage occurred in Wong Tai Sin from around 8pm on Wednesday due to a faulty 11kV cable and was fully restored at 12.11am yesterday. Lai, a manager of a banquet hall at Lions Rise Mall, said over 10 fish died, including expensive ones, due to the power cut.

"Some customers refused to pay the full bill and said they didn't enjoy their meal while some were forced to leave before they started eating," Lai said.

She added the restaurant lost over HK$20,000 and hoped CLP could arrange compensation.

The manager of another restaurant in the mall said some customers "took advantage of the chaos and left without paying."

An affected resident, Fong, said he could not bear the heat at home and had to head out.

Lawmakers have urged CLP to reveal the cause of the incident as soon as possible while the government reviews the current regulation mechanism.

Social welfare sector lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen said the government should consider introducing a penalty mechanism to ensure the stability and safety of power supply.

New Territories North lawmaker Edward Lau Kwok-fan urged the government to review the current classification system for each major power incident and compensate affected citizens.

CLP said yesterday they are conducting a detailed investigation into the cause of the power incident and will set up a special working group to review its power system management.

ayra.wang@singtaonewscorp.com