Electricity supply to areas in Central Singapore, including Bugis, City Hall and Marina, was disrupted for around 12 minutes yesterday afternoon due to equipment failure at the substation serving Carlton Hotel.

It also caused a fire at the hotel, forcing the evacuation of 1,000 people, but no injuries were reported.

Energy provider SP Group, which apologised for the outage, said power supply was restored to most locations by 1.21pm.

Several MRT stations were affected, but train services continued as usual. SP Group said it is investigating the incident. The equipment had been inspected on Feb 1.

On Jan 26, a faulty voltage transformer started a fire at a substation in Bright Hill, causing power outage in areas in Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Sin Ming, Toa Payoh and Thomson.