JAKARTA, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Bad weather triggered a widespread power outage across parts of Indonesia's Sumatra island on Friday evening, disrupting the regional transmission system, state electricity company PT PLN said on Saturday.
The blackout began at 6:44 p.m. local time after disturbances along transmission lines caused a decline in system frequency and triggered cascading failures across several areas, PLN President Director Darmawan Prasodjo said in a statement.
PLN said the affected transmission network was restored within about two hours, allowing crews to shift focus to restarting power plants and reconnecting generation units to the grid.
According to Prasodjo, hydroelectric and gas-fired power plants were able to resume operations relatively quickly, while coal-fired plants required between 15 and 20 hours to return to full operating capacity.
To accelerate recovery efforts, hundreds of personnel were deployed across affected provinces, including Jambi, West Sumatra, Riau, North Sumatra and Aceh. ■
