Hong Kong penalty scheme for power outages ‘overlooks small incidents’ after 2 CLP glitches, lawmaker says
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong’s existing penalty scheme for power outages has tended to “overlook small incidents” following two glitches in Tsing Yi in less than a week, a lawmaker has said as he urged authorities to review the system.
More than 300 households in Cheung On Estate’s On Mei House suffered an hour and a half power outage on Sunday morning. The incident followed a voltage dip at the nearby Nga Ying Chau Street Substation, which resulted in around 20 reports of people being trapped in the lifts on New Year’s Day. Both incidents were linked to CLP Power Hong Kong, one of the city’s major electricity suppliers.
The glitches had prompted the government to request CLP to launch a comprehensive review and submit reports within two weeks.
Tse Chin-wan, secretary for environment and ecology, said on Sunday that he had expressed his “deep disappointment” to CLP managing director Joseph Law over the events. He urged the power company to prevent similar incident from happening in the future.
CLP said that the two incidents were unrelated in a statement on Sunday.
Michael Tien, a pro-business lawmaker, said on Monday that CLP could not specify when the last inspections had been where the incidents occurred. He also questioned whether CLP engineers had conducted thorough checks at the site.
“If the sites were inspected recently, and they were confirmed [to be safe], that’d be the biggest issue,” Tien said on a RTHK programme in Cantonese. “Did that mean their staff were careless? Was the inspection performed as a formality?”
Penalty scheme
He pointed to the city’s newly-imposed penalty scheme for power outages, saying that the scheme tended to “focus on major incidents and overlook smaller-scale events.” The penalty scheme, imposed last November in what Tse described as a “breakthrough,” holds electricity firms accountable for large-scale power disruptions.
See also: 160,000 Hong Kong households plunged into darkness after power cable fire
Under the new rules, if CLP recorded 15 million minutes of power disruptions to households in a year, it would face a penalty of HK$20 million or a deduction of 0.015 per cent of the permitted return.
But Tien said the recent power outages were more “granular” and would escape scrutiny under the current penalty threshold. The lawmaker said that, according to his understanding, CLP’s power supply grid could be divided into three levels and the latest outage was caused by a fault when the power was converted to 220 volts to enter residential buildings.
“Every building converts power from 11,000 volts to 220 volts, and that is the most granular spot. If faults occur at that level, CLP will never be punished and never be held accountable, because the number would never add up [to 15 million minutes],” he said.
Speaking on the same programme, district councillor Lo Yuen-ting from the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong said that residents had reported hearing explosions during both incidents. She urged CLP to extend the inspection area.
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