Govt owes PNG Power K50mil but not reason for blackouts

WHILE the Government still owes PNG Power Ltd (PPL) K50 million in unpaid bills, it is not the reason for some of the power outages happening around the country, says PPL acting managing director Douglas Mageo.
Mageo said the Mt Hagen blackout over the weekend was due to technical issues.
He said most of the cuts came from transmission outages.
There were 514 transmission lines between Kundiawa and Kudjip plus 507 lines between Kundiawa and Goroka and outages were caused by tall trees coming into contact with the power lines.
“Our officers have been continuously attacked by landowners which has resulted in outages going longer than anticipated and increased down time in identifying fault and affecting restoration period,” Mageo said. “Apart from the Ramu Hydropower Station shutdown last weekend and the system fault on Monday, we had feeder two defect-earth fault caused by a damaged cross-arm which officers replaced within three hours.”