KOTA KINABALU: An Independent Power Producer (IPP) will shut down for maintenance works for two weeks from Wednesday that is set to put more pressure on already power reserve margins.
Sepangar Bay Power Corporation (SBPC) said that they would be carrying out scheduled maintenance at its facility (for Hot Gas Path Inspection or HGPI).
The Occupational Health and Safety Department would also carry out its inspection during the period.
The IPP's station manager Benny Dusti said the maintenance work would take two weeks and as such, the plant would not be able to supply 50MW to Sabah's main power grid.
Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd, which had a power generation capacity of about 1,080 megawatts (MW) mainly from IPPs, had been struggling to meet electricity needs during peak hour demand and had been forced to implement load shedding.
The shutdown of the utility company's Tenom Pangi hydro-electric dam and breakdowns and scheduled maintenance at IPPs continue to pose power supply disruptions especially during peak demands.
In a statement earlier Wednesday (Jan 24), SSEB said that the peak power demand for Wednesday was expected to touch 1070MW but they forecasted they could cope without implementing load shedding.
SESB general manager for Grid System operations Adrian Mosigil said that power peak demand to be at 1,041MW.
"We still have a reserve margin of 29MW to meet any power losses in the grid supply," he said, adding that they did not expect to implement load shedding during peak demand for today.
