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The accident that left most of Dubai blacked out for hours and which occurred at the Jebel Ali Power Station was due to a substation fault, said a senior Dubai Electricity and Water Authority official. It was not due to a glitch at the production generation unit, he said. Speaking exclusively to Gulf News at the Jebel Ali Power Station, Saeed Mohammad Al Tayer, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Dewa, said, "What happened actually is a fault in the GIS building 400KV substation. And I will assure you that there is no fault at the production generation unit. "So it is mainly a substation fault. This subject is still under investigation and we will address the press after finding the cause in due course."
He explained, "It took us about 15 minutes to restore some of the supplies. However, from a technical point of view, you cannot restore the supply to all areas immediately because you have to restore it step by step. I assure you that in most of the key areas in Dubai the power has been restored." He noted that power in areas like Rifaa, Jumeirah 1 & 2, Umm Suqueim, large parts of Deira area and Bur Dubai was restored within less than two to three hours. In commercial centres like Hamrain, City Centre and Al Ghurair the electric supply was restored within an hour, he said. The Dewa managing director added, "In certain areas, the restoration started early. For instance we managed to restore the supply in certain areas within 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes. "You cannot just restore automatically, but you have to go through the system, through the coordination between our engineers and the Najma control server."  | Saeed Mohammad Al Tayer... 'It is mainly a substation fault.' |  |
He explained that the Dewa emergency people were coordinating between the engineers and field people. When asked if the electric failure had anything to do with the heat, Al Tayer said, "No, it has nothing to do with the temperature. I assure you that we have sufficient capacity. It's not because of the generation or the load. "It is due to a fault in the [GIS] system Gas Insulators at 400KV substation. The GIS is a type of switchgear at the level of the 400 KV. "It is the backbone of the system. In simple language, when you have power to transfer from the power generation plant, it has to go through 400 KV substations where we had the fault." When asked why the back up systems didn't operate, he explained, "The accident was a fault and when the protection system reacted, it isolated the other equipment from the fault."
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