Power failure leaves Sharjah in the dark

SEWA implemented its five-step emergency plant to resolve the outage.

A sudden breakdown at a major electricity plant in Sharjah left thousands of people without power for more than 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Residents and businesses in Industrial Areas 1, 3 and 6, and in Hamriya Free Zone, the economic heartland of the emirate, were all disconnected until late into Wednesday afternoon.

The Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA) said it had been working hard to rectify the problem.

Gulf News reported that a local official had said that the power shortage occurred because the electricity supplied through the power lines was more than its capacity.

"The number of residential and commercial buildings is rising in Sharjah, and it is the national duty of residents to save the consumption of electricity in order to avoid such power outages from occurring," said Eisa Al Zarouni, director of SEWA’s control section, according to the newspaper.

In times of power shortages, SEWA implements its emergency plan that consists of five phases.

"The first phase includes separating some of the load in the industrial areas, and technicians are working to fix the generator as quick as possible," Al Zarouni said, adding that SEWA has an efficient maintenance and improvement plan to deal with such emergency cases.

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