(8/3/2012)
Bali’s kite flying season now in full swing is posing a threat to those living off the island’s power grid.
According to the Bali Post, almost every evening power outages occur in various parts of the island caused by errant kites or kite strings that become entangled with the electrical power lines.
“Electrical blackouts in certain areas happen almost every night. In the kite flying season outages occur because of kite strings or kites shorting out electrical lines,” explained a State Power Board (PLN) Official in Bali, Wayan Bujana.
Bujana has urged the public not to leave their kites unattended at night. Bujana warned:” At night, the winds die down. At night moisture accumulates on the kite lines. With no wind, the kites will fall. If they touch a PLN transmission line a blackout will occur. This happens almost every night.”
Bujana raised the alarm further, warning that if unattended, kites hit main transmission lines or transformers resulting in blackouts affecting wide areas of the island, leaving large areas of the island in the dark for anything from 15 minutes to 5 hours.
He warned that between 2006 and 2010 Bali experienced a total of five total blackouts of the island, three of which were linked to kite flying.
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