Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) issued a statement on the 7th regarding the large-scale power outage that occurred for about two hours on the afternoon of the 6th in parts of Nam-gu and Ulju-gun, Ulsan, saying, "We deeply apologize for the significant inconvenience caused to the public" and "We will thoroughly investigate the cause and prepare measures to prevent recurrence."
KEPCO announced plans to activate an emergency fault investigation team on the same day to identify the cause and establish preventive measures. According to KEPCO, President Kim Dong-cheol convened an emergency management meeting with executives at 9 a.m. that day to check the restoration status of the power outage and discuss future countermeasures. The previous day, KEPCO had ordered the activation of an emergency response team to minimize the outage and establish an urgent fault recovery plan.
On the afternoon of the 6th, a power outage occurred in the Nam-gu area of Ulsan City and Ulju-gun, causing the traffic lights around Gongyeoptap to go out, and cars are moving slowly. [Image source=Yonhap News]
At around 3:37 p.m. the previous day, a power outage occurred affecting approximately 155,000 households in Nam-gu, Ulsan, and Ulju-gun due to equipment malfunction at the Okdong Substation, which supplies electricity to the Nam-gu area of Ulsan. KEPCO explained that at the time, one of the two busbars (large cross-sectional main lines distributing current to external lines through circuit breakers at power plants or substations) supplying power was de-energized for maintenance to replace an aging circuit breaker that had been in use for 28 years. KEPCO currently estimates that the fault was caused by insulation failure inside the circuit breaker.
A police officer signaling with hand gestures during a power outage in downtown Ulsan. Photo by Yonhap News
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