Case of the missing electricity

Occasionally, weird things happen.

On Wednesday, no one was at the office. I was out attending meetings, the big boss has his things to attend to in Johor, while the rest of the staff were sent for a routine team-building course, this time in Hulu Langat. That Wednesday afternoon, there was a thunderstorm. When I got back to the office around 6.30 p.m., I noticed that power was out. I suspected that our four-storey office could have been hit by lightning, therefore causing a short circuit, hence the circuit breaker kicked in causing the blackout. I called the officer in charge of administration, informing her about the blackout, and she told me that she'll get someone to check things out the next day.

On Thursday, when everyone came in, there was still no light. The circuit breaker did not kick in as I had thought. By 9 a.m., our electrical technicians and building contractor arrived, doing several checks, and found nothing wrong. There was electricity from the complex's main supply into the electrical meter, but somehow there was no electricity going into the office from the meter. One hour later, things remained very much the same. And so, it was decided that all staff were to go home (as we couldn't do anything at the office without electricity), but the working day will have to be replaced on one of the coming Saturdays.

I went home to complete some work that needed to be done. But since my home is very near to the office, I was able to check on things from time to time. By mid-day, a lot more checks were done, and still the mystery couldn't be solved. TNB was called in, and they did checks on the supply to the office, and found nothing wrong. The technicians checked the wiring in the office (all four levels), and found nothing wrong. By the end of the afternoon, everyone was scratching their heads.

My final visit to the office yesterday was at 9.45 p.m. When I got there, my colleague was still there, along with our electrical technicians and building contractor, as well as technicians from TNB. At around 10 p.m., one of the technicians from TNB finally noticed the problem. And the problem was due to a mistake done by the developer's electrical contractor.

Apparently, all this while, we have been paying the electricity bills for the unit next to us (which happens to be vacant). No wonder our bills only amounted to about RM10 all these months. And because of this, our electricity usage was billed to the vacant unit. Since no one occupies the next unit, no one paid for the bills. Because no one was paying, so TNB (following its procedures) cut off the electricity supply.

No one realised this because the labelling at the meters were all mixed-up. The problem was simple, but to get the solution was a herculean task. TNB was kind enough to restore the power supply to our office, as this was not our fault. The developer has been informed and will have to rectify the problem. And the situation returned to normal at about 10.15 p.m.

This is certainly one incident to be remembered: The case of the missing electricity.

Like I remarked at the beginning, occasionally weird things happen. Fortunately, we didn't have to call in Fox Mulder out of retirement.