Power outage blamed on a Jersey fault

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Guernsey Electricity have confirmed the recent island-wide power cut was due to a fault with the cable in Jersey.

A section of the cable on the land at Greve de Lecq, was found to be damaged over the weekend, and is suspected to have sparked the outage which happened last Monday, leaving the island in the dark for almost an hour during the tea time rush hour.

Engineers began looking for the fault soon after the power cut on Monday 1 October, and are now expected to undertake work on the Jersey beach to make necessary repairs. 

Sally-Ann David, Chief Operator Officer at Guernsey Electricity, said: "Over the weekend Guernsey Electricity’s engineers located the source of the cable link failure that resulted in the island wide power cut.

"Guernsey Electricity is working closely with the cable manufacturer and specialist repair teams from across Europe to ensure a repair is undertaken as quickly as possible. 

"Since Greve de Lecq is of special ecological interest, Guernsey Electricity has secured permission from the Jersey Department of Environment to dig in the area."

The fault itself is still present, and repair work has not yet started, so Guernsey is still being powered by on-island generation. But a plan is now being drawn up by Guernsey Electricity, who said it did not yet have a time scale of when repairs would take place, though would publish that information when it was available. 

On-island generation was still suitable for the meantime, it confirmed. 

Pictured: The cable link with France, via Jersey, which provides Guernsey with electricity.