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StrontiumDog

Samui, Phangan still without power | Bangkok Post: breakingnews

Samui, Phangan still without power

• Published: 5/12/2012 at 01:49 PM
• Online news:

Thousands of homes and businesses on Samui and Phangan islands in Surat Thani province were still without electricity for the second day on Wednesday after an underwater power cable ruptured on Tuesday. Tourists were rushing to leave the islands.

Normally the holiday season Samui island, one of Thailand's major tourist destinations, would have about 20,000 tourists. That number had shrunk to about one thousand, reports said.

Power was still sporadically available on parts of the islands, but hotels and resorts were having to rely on their own generators, or candles. The wireless telecommunication network had also been knocked out.

The Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) in Koh Samui district explained that the outage was caused by a rupture to the submarine power cable connecting a substation on Samui island with the mainland.

The reserve power supply was only able to distribute electricity to one fifth of the islands' area at a time, on a two hour rotation, the PEA said.

Wanni Thaipanich, chairwoman of the association of tourism promotion for Koh Phangan, said smaller hotels were suffering as guests cancelled out and moved to larger establishments with their own power generators.

Provincial governor Chatpong Chatphuti said that engineers were being flown in to address the problem and it was expected that the power would be on again by 11pm of Wednesday. Mobile generators had also been dispatched to major hospitals on the islands.

PTT had been asked to urgently transport fuel to both islands as there was now a fuel shortage and people were hoarding supplies. Many hotels were running out of fuel for their generators.

Samui and Phangan have a combined daily power consumption of about 90 megawatts.

__________________
"Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice."-Simón Bolívar

taxexile

snigger.

alitongkat

yep....

is this called "disaster management" or so?

(its just a power cut (on the 2nd most popular tourist destination in high season), snigger...)

if anything worse than a power cut happens, then...

gaysexbyproxy

No speculation as to what caused it? Strange...

Norton

Could have been lot's of things with underwater cable. Net trawler, ship arnchor, faulty cable. Who knows? Always a risk for relitively small islands relying on power from mainland. Inadequte emergency power backup also with over deveoped islands seems the norm.

StrontiumDog

Power Failure Leaves Samui, Phangan Blacked Out for 36 Hours - Phuket Wan

Power Failure Leaves Samui, Phangan Blacked Out for 36 Hours

By Chutima Sidasathian
Wednesday, December 5, 2012

PHUKET: Tourists on the island of Samui will be hoping the lights come on again at midnight tonight after more than 36 hours without power.

Electricity was cut off to Samui and the neighboring island of Phangan at 9am yesterday in a planned outage designed to upgrade an undersea cable.

But when the switch was flicked to turn on the power again, the entire supply to Samui dropped out and stayed out.

Promchote Traivate, Director of Tourism and Sport for Surat Thani province, said: ''We hope it comes on at midnight tonight and stays on.''

Khun Chote, who once held the same position on Phuket, said he had been told that the engineer capable of repairing the cable had to travel from Chiang Rai, north of Bangkok, to Samui.

''The blackout was not good for the restaurants,'' Khun Chote said. ''But resorts all have alternative power and so whatever problems there may have been were limited.''

Khun Chote said that because businesses had been warned about the planned outage, they were better prepared and able to cope with the unplanned outage.

Samui and Phangan have experienced unplanned outages as well in the past.

An increase in the quantity of power for the islands is expected to solve the problem permanently in March.

taxexile

some enforcement of planning laws as opposed to greed driven expansion on those awful islands would have allowed expansion to occur at the same pace as infrastructure improvements, had that been the case these third world power cuts would not occur, but as so often is the case thais put the cart in front of the horse and expect results.

Thetyim

Yes, there's a lot of undersea cables up there.
He must be rushed off his feet.

Listerman

More precisely they place the profit to be had from continued and uncontrolled development well ahead of the cost of the infrastructure necessary to support it, because they see it as someone elses problem, until such time as an event such as this occurs.

FlyFree

Says it all. Really, is it surprising?

Got nothing to do with profit, everything to do with Somchai.

Rural Surin

Can be the norm most everywhere...
Needn't be an overcrowded touristy locale.

It is what it is.

__________________
" Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology, it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things......natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

alitongkat

some more food poisonings ahead?

gaysexbyproxy

Next farang death, here we go!

Listerman

Dont be so sure, its highly likely that they did not have sufficient circuit breakers in the system, thus allowing them to switch smaller sections of the total electical load on in managable chunks thus keeping the surge load within managable levels. Instead a large part of the system was possibly switched on in one hit, and the power surge was of such intensity it overwhelmed the available power generating capacity, hence the circuit breakers tripped again before it caused serious damage elsewhere.

Circuit breakers required to handle this sort of load would not be cheap, hence they would try to skimp on the quantity of these if at all possible.

The Fresh Prince

This would normally be great news because the wife works in Samui for the first week of every month. Because of the power cut she's two days behind schedule so isn't coming back until Monday.

Bad news is that my atm card is in her bag after a night on the piss last week.

t.s

i have a friend down there with 2 restaurants and 2 generators.

he is doing quite well right now

ch1ldofthemoon

I remember Phuket in the 9o`s....if you got power everyday,you were`nt in phuket!

alitongkat

power back?

FlyFree

Thanks for that enlightening explanation of possible scenario. After spending 10 yrs in HV distribution in a previous life, who'da thunk.

So, cutting through the long-winded crap, it comes back to, uhh, Somchai Iamaprimefukkinfucktard.

FlyFree

No.

Somjit knows fuckall about undersea cables. But he has the only soldering iron in the Land of Retards.
They put Somjit on a bus to Samui. Arrived two days later.

Somchai: Somjit, fix cable.
Somjit: Cannot do.
Somchai: But you have the soldering iron.
Somjit: Somtamslap gave me 5 bottles of Lao Khao Extra for soldering iron.
Somchai: Was it good?
Somjit: Krap. Dee mak mak.

So now the search is on for Somtamslap.

He was last seen fornicating with an assortment of farm animals on his father-in-law's farm.



Maybe 3 o'clock, yes?

StrontiumDog

Visitors flee power blackout on Koh Samui, Koh Phangan | Bangkok Post: news

Visitors flee power blackout on Koh Samui, Koh Phangan

• Published: 6/12/2012 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

SURAT THANI : Technicians worked through the night trying to restore electricity on Koh Samui and Koh Phangan as a two-day power blackout has forced thousands of tourists to flee the islands.


Charupong: Sends out generators

The islands have been without power since Tuesday morning after a section of an underground high-voltage cable in tambon Taling Ngam of Koh Samui district ruptured.

The cable provides electricity from Nakhon Si Thammarat's Khanom district.

Inspectors found that Khanom Electricity Generating Co in Nakhon Si Thammarat, which supplies power to Koh Samui and Koh Phangan, temporarily shut off the electricity for maintenance.

The system failed when they tried to restart it, said Sakda Nawarat, the deputy chief of the Provincial Electricity Authority's (PEA) customer service section.

Chanchai Banditsaowaphak, assistant to the PEA governor on network operations, said technicians expected to finish the repairs to the broken section by 6am today.

Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan yesterday instructed state agencies to dispatch mobile generators to the affected areas, as tourists faced many problems after being without electricity since Tuesday.

Many tourists left their resorts, crowding Koh Samui's only airport in tumultuous scenes.

Typically at this time of year Koh Samui hosts about 20,000 tourists. That number shrank to about 1,000 yesterday.

Tourism officials said the blackout should not chase away tourists in the long term, as most holiday-makers have yet to arrive for what is the local high season, starting in the middle of the month.

"Total damages to tourism on the two islands should not be more than 5 billion baht," estimated Wanni Thaipanich, chairwoman of the association of tourism promotion for Koh Phangan.

Hotels and residents on the pair of islands struggled for light, using their own generators or candles.

But many people were hoarding supplies and several hotels were running out of fuel for their generators.

"Many hotels have also begun to stock oil [to fuel generators], for fear that petrol stations will run out of it," said Sunthon Phuphaibun, manager of Coral Cove hotel, which is in the dark after the hotel's generator failed yesterday when it overheated.

Mobile phones on Koh Samui were also knocked out after fuel for generators powering the island's transmission poles ran out.

During repairs yesterday, PEA officials had to rely on limited power supply reserves, forcing them to distribute power to small sections of the island in two-hour rotations.

"At least people could do some cooking," a PEA official said.

PTT Plc yesterday delivered about 200,000 litres of fuel to five petrol stations on Koh Samui to ease the fuel shortage.

StrontiumDog

Latest.........

MCOT English News ‏@MCOT_Eng

Provincial Electricity Authority fixing cable rupture which caused power cut at Samui, Pha-ngan; power expected to be restored by noon

Thetyim

It was reported that the cable was being upgraded.
So if the new cable failed why didn't they revert back to the old cable.
The reporting of this is, as usual, full of contradictions.


The word 'undersea' has been dropped and it's now 'underground' cable

Spin

Maybe Loytoy cut through it with his fucking angle grinder

corvettelover

warm beer not a good look