TNB Clarifies Misunderstanding About Maintenance Schedule

10/07/2009

Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) wish to clarify some misunderstanding over our scheduled maintenance, the list of which is posted on our website. It has come to our attention that some segments of our customers appear to have the wrong impression that the maintenance work will cause power cuts almost nationwide. The scheduled maintenance work is actually phased out throughout the country within an 18-month cycle. The intention for the issuance of the maintenance notice is to give prior information to the affected customers of an impending outage affecting localised areas at different periods (not concurrent and not widespread). In other words, only pockets of an area will be affected when scheduled maintenance is conducted within a vicinity. This is because maintenance work is sectionalised. For example, if a maintenance work is conducted at a substation in one neighbourhood, not all customers in the area will experience disruption in power. Instead, only a particular row or lane in a neighbourhood will not get electricity supply. More often than not, TNB customers did not feel or realise an on-going scheduled maintenance as TNB always strive to ensure that there will be minor interruptions to the system. Where possible, alternate supply is provided to our critical customers through mobile generator sets and feedback substations. This is in line with our commitment to restore electricity as fast as we can and to give the highest level of service to our customers. We are doing the scheduled maintenance to ensure minimal, if not uninterruptible electricity supply for our customers in the future. In addition, we are required under our licence condition to conduct scheduled maintenance of our substations. It is a routine maintenance work meant to keep our installations in good operating conditions just like what a regular service does to a car. We also wish to inform that it is our standard practice to send out notices at least three days before the actual events through the traditional media, but we are doing that much earlier through our own website. Additionally, for our industrial customers, follow-up special notices (flyers) are circulated. We are also in constant contact with our critical customers so as to come up with an acceptable date and time for both parties on a shutdown.