Casinos in Macau might need to be considering investing in their own permanent sources of electricity. This past Saturday, both the Ponte 16 and the Golden Dragon suffered extended power outages, resulting in a certain amount of lost income. Now, it appears that venues operated by Sands China also suffered from a loss of power on Sunday. Power wasn’t stabilized until this past Wednesday.
According to a report by GGRAsia, four gaming venues in Cotai operated by Sands China saw “over 90 gaming machines” suspended from operation due to “unstable power,” according to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ, for its acronym in Portuguese). The media outlet adds that it attempted to contact Sands China for more information, but had not received a response before press time.
The unstable power affected games at the Casino Venetian, Casino Sands Cota Central, Casino Plaza and Casino Parisian Macao. The DICJ told GGRAsia in an email, “Over 90 gaming machines at the four [Cotai] casinos run by Venetian Macau, SA have been suspended since 10am on January 20 due to unstable power.”
As was the case with both outages at Ponte 16 and Golden Dragon, the local power company, CEM, said that it had not noted any power issues on Sunday at the four venues. It added that Sands China had not contacted the firm to seek help with unstable power problems.
Ponte 16 had indicated that it suffered an issue with an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) on Saturday, but a UPS is typically used as a backup in the event the main power supply has issues. That outage caused gaming activity to be halted for ten hours. The same day, Golden Dragon also suffered from “power-related issues” that resulted in gambling to be suspended for five hours.
A single “power stability” issue could be attributed to a number of causes – faulty local wiring, a bad transformer, etc. Two issues on the same day, especially at two locations that are substantially separated, indicates a more widespread problem. Add an additional four dispersed throughout the area and there would seem to be cause for concern that the entire area’s power system might be suffering from faults.
