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REVEALED: Under-investment in electrical infrastructure
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In the wake of yesterdy's power problem, it has emerged that the electrical infrastructure has been suffering from under-investment. "The new Government has started to upgrade the distribution network which should have happened ten years ago," said statement.
The power failure yesterday was not a power generation issue but a network supply failure.
First indications are that damage was caused to a cable between the Orange Bastion distribution centre and the OESCO generating station. It is possible that a contractor may have caused the damage. This will be investigated fully today as all efforts are now centred on the restoration of power to all parts of Gibraltar.
'CREAKING ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE'
"Indeed, efforts to restore power caused overloading to other parts of the system and hence further failures.The creaking electrical infrastructure has, in any case, suffered from under-investment for many years. The new Government has started to upgrade the distribution network and will continue to do so. However, this should have happened ten years ago," it added.
Gibraltar was without electricity for over 3 hours yesterday, from about 3.30pm to 7pm. The whole of Gibraltar was affected, excluding some MOD supplied areas and those with their own generation equipment, such as the hospital.
Engineers had to locate where the fault was before they could start to correct the problem.
TELECOM SERVICES
For its part, Gibtelecom says it was "largely able to maintain its fixed line, internet, mobile and business enterprise services."
Xavi Bado, Technical Director, said: “The company had invested heavily in recent years in its own standby-power generation across many of its thirty technical sites around the Rock, which paid dividends in moments like yesterday afternoon. "Particularly significant was that the company’s communications switches, IT data centres and customer services systems all remained operational.
“Unfortunately at this time the Catalan Bay technical facility is under reconstruction and consequently this area will have experienced service disruptions. Also a few mobile base stations, where the physical space is too limited for full stand-by power, may have been lost after a time.”
Mr Moreno, Operations Director, added that “although Gibtelecom stayed up and running, individual consumers may have lost connectivity for the duration of the GEA outage if their telephone, computer or internet router is dependent on being plugged into the electricity network”.
31-07-12
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