Hong Kong vitality agency ought to give again any reward for fixing energy outage brought on by human error, minister urges

Beneath the reward mechanism, HK Electrical is predicted to yield an extra return of HK$7.4 million (US$942,723) as there was an 0.015 per cent incentive adjustment for energy restoration inside 65 minutes.

“I’ve advised to HK Electrical that they’ve to present again their reward to residents in case they have one,” Tse stated, including authorities weren’t glad with the corporate’s efficiency through the incident.

“Given this incident, we consider that the mechanism has room to enhance. Subsequently, taking the chance of the approaching midterm evaluate of the settlement, the federal government will talk about with the 2 energy firms the way to additional enhance the mechanism.”

The mechanism was supposed to encourage vitality companies to shortly restore energy following an outage and targeted extra on the time wanted for restoration, the minister defined.

He added that the federal government would take into account together with different elements, comparable to the rationale for outages and their restore efficiency, earlier than issuing a reward.

HK Electrical, which is able to submit an investigative report back to the federal government in 4 weeks, described the ability outage as a “uncommon” incident.

The corporate stated it will follow its take care of the federal government when requested whether or not it will situation tariff subsidies as compensation for patrons.

Jimmy Kwok Chun-wah, chairman of the Vitality Advisory Committee, which gives coverage solutions to the federal government, stated authorities ought to take into account outages lately involving HK Electrical and CLP Energy after they assessed the efficiency of the 2 companies throughout this 12 months’s interim evaluate of management agreements.

“The agreements could not be capable of predict what occurs sooner or later. This interim evaluate can mend what has been unclear,” he added.

“They’ll amend the phrases [of the agreements] primarily based on what has occurred previously 5 years to provide you with higher preventive measures.”

Kwok additionally advised HK Electrical label backup energy cables with QR codes that present upkeep directions for staff.

“The corporate can think about using sensible expertise for prevention. It will probably change into a part of the check-up procedures in order that employees members know the background of the cables and what they can not do with them,” he stated.

Discussing the outage, Edward Lo Wai-chau, of the Hong Kong Establishment of Engineers’ electrical division, had stated it was “unusual” to have an unrecorded energy cable in a circuit diagram.

“It should contain human negligence as there’s a cable lacking within the data,” he stated, describing the incident as a “low-level mistake”.

“Upkeep procedures must be executed higher. The incident has proven that staff can’t solely depend on paperwork, as there are all the time variations from actuality.”

Lo added that upkeep staff concerned within the incident had greater than 10 years of expertise on the job and will have been overconfident and keen to ignore procedures. He urged Hong Kong Electrical to evaluate its employees coaching.