Police have confiscated the crane and reported on the driver that caused a huge blackout that affected the southern region on May 22.
Tree collided with the power line
The massive power outage hit 22 provinces and cities at around 2pm, causing chaos. Some provinces had to wait until 10pm for the electricity.
The incident happened when driver Ngo Dinh Thao was moving trees near to the one of the country’s two 500KV power lines. Both the 220KV and 110KV line were also affected, which forced EVN to shut down all of its electrical substations.
The overall damage assessment has not been released, however, EVN announced that it lost 9,400MW of electricity during the outage.
Vu Ngoc Minh, vice president of Management Board of the National Power Transmission Corporation said incidents like this had previously affected the 220KV line. In 2012, an accident in Ca Mau 2 Hydropower Plant rendered the 500KV lines unstable and caused power outages in some southern provinces.
Vietnam's electricity transmission from the north to the south depends heavily on only two 500KV lines so the lines are often overload. Minh said they have to carry out frequent checks to ensure stability.
Members of the public however still remain largely ignorant or refuse to adhere rules about keeping equipment at least 8 metres away from high voltage power lines.
"Electricity incidents could occur if a crane is within five metres of a 500KV line." said Tran Viet Ngai, chairman of Vietnam Energy Association.
In the future, new thermal power plants and an addition 500KV line will be added to the national power grid, in hope that they can prevent a similar situation.
