Power supply failure due to intertwined wires – MRT-3 report

Intertwined wires caused the power supply failure at the Metro Rail Transit 3 (MRT-3), disabling trains to run and leaving hundreds of commuters stranded early Monday morning.

An MRT-3 incident report revealed that the intertwined wires were discovered between North Avenue and GMA-Kamuning Stations around 6 a.m. after MRT-3’s Overhead Catenary System (OCS) team reported power failure around 4 a.m.

The MRT-3 Control Center decided to stop service operations around 5 a.m. while interventions were on-going.

“It was identified that the power supply failure was due to intertwined wires – the stringed new feeder wire made contact with the outrun messenger wire,” the report said. “This affected the supply of 750 Vdc of electricity needed to run our trains.”

The power supply normalized at 6:15 a.m. and by 6:50 a.m., seven trains were deployed with 10-11minutes of headway to load passengers.

Currently, the MRT-3 management said they are further investigating if the “cable pulling” done on Sunday night by power capacity expansion contractor AsiaPhil has affected the wirings along the MRT-3 tracks.  /kga