Advertisement

Hong Kong’s CLP Power ordered to submit report within month after second voltage dip in week traps at least 152 people in lifts

  • CLP Power boss apologises and says company is investigating the voltage dip
  • Lawmakers say such incidents are ‘unacceptable’ and urge authorities to include voltage dips as factors in a punishment mechanism for city’s power firms

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
A voltage dip occurred in parts of Kowloon and the New Territories for the second time in a week. Photo: Elson Li
Hong Kong authorities have ordered electricity supplier CLP Power to submit a report within a month after a second voltage dip in a week trapped at least 152 people in lifts and triggered 16 automatic fire alarms in Kowloon and the New Territories.
Advertisement

Lawmakers called such incidents “unacceptable” and urged authorities to include voltage dips as factors in a punishment mechanism that applied to the city’s two power suppliers.

CLP Power managing director Joseph Law Ka-chun apologised on Saturday, and said the company was investigating the cause of the dip and would submit a report within four weeks as requested by the government.

Law said a high-voltage-equipment failure occurred at Black Point Power Station in Tuen Mun at around 1.29pm when the thunderstorm warning was in effect in the city. It caused a 0.1-second voltage dip in the 400kV power supply system. But he added that the power supply was not interrupted.

He said residents in different areas might have been affected because the dip occurred in a high-voltage system.

“We immediately arranged for engineering personnel to inspect the high-voltage equipment in Black Point Power Station and reported it to the relevant government departments,” he said.

Advertisement

Law added that voltage dips were unavoidable in different power systems, and a CLP team would provide technical support to customers to look into how to reduce the sensitivity of their equipment to such issues.

Advertisement