By Staff Writer
An electricity blackout for all of Upolu last Monday gave the new Electric Power Corporation boss a shock welcome on his first day in office.
EPC General Manager, Faumui Iese Toimoana, was finishing up for the day when the power went down.
Faumui scrambled with his staff to trace the fault to the loss of power generation and managed to restore electricity to the whole island in just over two hours.
The Corporation in a statement said the fault was traced to the Lalomauga hydro power station.
The loss of power “rapidly escalated into a supply-demand imbalance and eventually led to a total system collapse”, according to the statement.
“The event began when Lalomauga Hydro tripped from a technical fault causing loss of power generation from Lalomauga and Ta’elefaga hydro stations.
“The two online Fiaga generators responded to recover the loss of power supply but all reached full load capacity and unable to sustain system stability.”
The Corporation assured a commitment to “continue to review its protection coordination to make sure we can identify and isolate areas under fault condition as quickly as possible.”
The power blackout started at 5.28pm and was restored at 7.48pm on the same day.
“The Samoa Electric Power Corporation conveys its sincere apologies to all our valued customers, businesses and partners
“We also wish to apologise to our valued customers for the delayed information on the Blackout.
“Given the need to thoroughly investigate the cause of the blackout, the prolonged release of the information is to assure all data obtained is accurate and sufficient for our general public’s information and to make sure the Corporation puts in-place appropriate measures, to rectify the problem from happening again.
“Again we apologize for the inconvenience caused and we thank the public for its patience and continuous support while EPC worked to restore power to all businesses and homes.”