Authorities work out emergency response plan to cope with blackouts

BANGKOK, May 27 (TNA) - Authorities concerned have formed a joint working group to set the line of command within two weeks to respond to any massive blackout, following a recent one in 14 southern Thai provinces. Direk Lavansiri, Chairman of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), told reporters on Monday that the working group was formed at a meeting between the ERC, which is empowered to issue measures for the security and reliability of power supply in the country, and representatives of three electricity authorities, held in Bangkok earlier in the day, to discuss responsive measures for any massive blackout following the region-wide outage in the Thai South on May 21. Direk said that the working group will also design operations to quickly restore power supply, while the National Control Center of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) will be authorized to cut off power supply in some areas to prevent a massive blackout. An ERC member, Pallapa Ruangrong, noted that last week's massive blackout in the Thai South was inevitable because lightning had struck a 500kV power transmission cable, and that the EGAT tried to cope with it by buying electricity from neighbouring Malaysia but a power transmission line from Malaysia also malfunctioned. Pallapa revealed, however, that concerned authorities are finding out whether the EGAT failed to maintain lightning conductor cables and caused lightning to hit the 500kV power transmission line, if so, the ERC would fine the EGAT and would compensate affected people with the fine. (TNA)