JAKARTA – Power has started returning in most areas affected by an outage in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on May 2, officials said, and efforts were continuing to fully restore services.
A power outage hit a number of regions in Bali on May 2 from 4pm local time, said state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN).
The island’s airport was also impacted but inbound and outbound flight traffic continued using backup generators, the airport’s general manager Ahmad Syaugi Shahab said in a statement, although several departures had experienced delays.
Images shared on social media showed road traffic holdups in Bali as a result of the outage and long lines at the airport check-in counters.
Power began to return a few hours after the blackout.
“State utility PLN managed to restore most of the electricity supply in Bali,” Mr Prasetyo Hadi, the spokesman of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, said in a statement after calling PLN’s chief executive officer.
“God willing, power connection in Bali will be fully restored tonight (on the night of May 2),” he said.
PLN prioritised restoring electricity to key infrastructure such as government offices, hospitals, the airport, as well as hotels, said Mr Prasetyo.
The outage was caused by disruption in the subsea cables which connect the electricity system in Bali with Java island, triggering blackouts in a number of areas in Bali, he added.
Bali is Indonesia’s main tourist hot spot, with 6.3 million foreign visitors in 2024, according to the island’s statistics bureau. REUTERS
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