Lights Out
Talk about power outages -- from the
Financial Times:
Indonesian outage leaves 100m without electricity
Some 100m Indonesians were without electricity on Thursday as power outages hit the country's main grid, leaving office workers in Jakarta trapped in elevators and the state-owned power monopoly struggling for an explanation.
Perusahaan Listrik Negara said power was last night being restored across most affected areas after a failure hit the Java-Madura-Bali inter-connection system at 10.23am, causing outages across the main island of Java and nearby Bali.
But Eddie Widiono, PLN's president, warned that yesterday's problems highlighted the fragile state of an electricity grid that almost half of Indonesia's 220m population relies on.
In parts, the main transmission lines were more than 20 years old, Mr Widiono told reporters. The outages also highlighted what is rapidly becoming an energy crisis for Indonesia, one of the world's most resource- and energy-rich countries.
Talk about piss-poor planning. They are running with an infrastructure that is 20 years old in places. They have good oil reserves but they have to import because they haven't invested in the equipment to pump and refine their own.
To highlight the mentality of these people:
In a big setback last year, the Constitutional Court struck down a 2002 electricity law that would have opened up the sector to competition and privatization.
Granted, California privatized their power supply and look at what happened there. But Pennsylvania did and that is a major success story. Depends on the leadership.
Posted by DaveH at August 19, 2005 5:39 PM