Power outage linked to Hulhumale’ powerhouse upgrade

The power outage on Saturday in Male’ City and Hulhumale’ was caused by an issue encountered after a planned system upgrade at the Hulhumale’ 50MW power plant, says State Electric Company (STELCO).

The outage hit the populous Maldivian capital at around 12:00 pm Saturday.

STELCO, which initially attributed the outage simply to “a technical issue”, later confirmed that the disruption was linked to a systems upgrade carried out at the Hulhumale’ power plant earlier on Saturday.

The outage had hit an hour after STELCO announced that it had managed to avoid cutting off power to any part of Male’ City or Hulhumale’ as it carried out the upgrade.

“Power interruptions in parts of Malé and Hulhumalé were caused by an issue encountered after a planned system upgrade at the Hulhumalé 50MW power plant, resulting in the temporary shutdown of generating units,” said STELCO in a statement.

The utility company said that its teams were working to restore the system and bring the grid back to normal operation.

“The upgrade was necessary to improve long-term system reliability and stability,” added the company.

Power was restored to some parts of Male’ City and Hulhumale’ around an hour after the outage hit. The utility company said it is working on restoring power to the remaining areas as well.

The outage comes amid frequent outages in the capital in recent weeks. However, the recent outages have been mostly attributed to damage to cables, with STELCO working quickly to fix the issues and restore power.

However, the outage on Saturday is reminiscent of a total blackout in the capital last year, that left tens of thousands of people who live there without power for nearly six hours.

The blackout on June 1 prompted President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu to order a police investigation. However, the findings of this investigation were never publicly disclosed.