PLN Has No Assurance of No More Blackout in the Future

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Sripeni Inten Cahyani, the acting president director of state-run electricity firm PLN, said she could not make an assurance that there would be no similar incident of Sunday’s blackout that hit three provinces in the future.

“We apologize that it’s not our capacity to talk about a guarantee. But we will take every best effort to prevent yesterday’s event from happening again,” said Sripeni after meeting with the House of Representatives (DPR) Energy Commission in the Parliament Complex, Jakarta, Tuesday, August 6.

Sripeni considered the major power outage in Jakarta, West Java, and Banten a disaster. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo also highly concerned about it by visiting the PLN main office on Monday, August 5.

“Therefore, our utmost priority is to earnestly conduct preservation.”

Sripeni went on to say that her corporate had arranged programs related to the security system of Java-Bali electricity network, including the power plants, transmission, substations, up to customers.

As of date, Sripeni could not make any conclusion yet about the main cause of the outage but maintained it could not be blamed on a single cause. The firm, she added, required time to run thorough investigation considering the complex electricity system.

“We ask for more time as we need to assure the cause [of the blackout] and our next steps,” Sripeni said.

CAESAR AKBAR