Sabah's persistent electricity disruptions

The unreliability of Sabah’s power grid is set to be a key issue when the eastern Malaysian state heads to the ballot box by January 2026.

Note: *System Average Interruption Duration Index (Saidi) represents the average electricity interruption in minutes experienced by customers in a year. For comparison, Saidi in Peninsular Malaysia has been below an hour in recent years.
Prior to 2019, major incidents and planned outages were excluded in reporting.
According to the Energy Commission of Sabah, Covid-19 delayed the roll-out of new power plants, which reduced the reserve margin in 2023 and 2024 before it recovered to 17 per cent above peak demand in mid-2025.
Chart: STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICSSource: Malaysia's Energy Commission and Energy Commission of Sabah.