Jersey businesses and homes were expecting to be reconnected to gas services during Thursday, after an island-wide gas supply outage caused by a ‘software issue’. However, Island Energy said they were still “testing”.
[updated 13th October 2023 06:00]
The Jersey gas supply was cut on Saturday 7th October, leaving many islanders without hot water and causing a big challenge for the hospitality industry, many of whom currently rely on gas.
Island Energy (IE) said: “We have isolated and fixed the issue at our plant in Jersey. A software error triggered the safety procedure which shut down the plant, which it will do if there is any risk to the network, ensuring that we are safe. This issue has now been fixed.”
The Jersey Government expects the gas supply to be restored for all commercial and domestic customers by Sunday 15th October
IE had hoped to start the restoration of the gas network on 10th October, but this target was then delayed to late on 12th October.
IE said they started reconnecting some customers from last night. “We will be focusing on ‘key commercial customers’, priority community facilities and priority care customers first. We continue to work through our plan.
“All customers will or have received communications letting them know whether they need a visit from an engineer or if they can turn their supply back on themselves when we let them know it is safe to do so.”
The current reconnection timescale from Island Energy is:
Phase 1: From Thursday evening and into the weekend
“Customers who require an engineer to turn their supply back on. We would anticipate that most of these customers will receive a visit from an engineer over this weekend.”
Phase 2: Customer who can self-restore
“We will let you know when to do this (target Friday afternoon).
“Customers who can turn their supply back on themselves will or have received instructions on how to do this. These instructions will be on our website when the time comes to turn [the] supply on. We will let customers know when this is via letter, our website and social media.
“Please DO NOT turn on your gas unless we have asked you to do so.”
Deputy Helen Miles expects the gas supply to be restored for all commercial and domestic customers by Sunday 15th October.
IE has 4,500 customers across Jersey with just under half of these using gas for heating and hot water. Approximately 1,200 of these have a combination boiler which means they won’t have any alternative means of getting hot water. They have 400 commercial customers, using gas for a mix of hot water and cooking.
Jersey Government says that all government buildings, including schools, hospitals, sports facilities (except Aquasplash) and care homes, will remain open as normal. There may be minor but manageable disruption to hot water and heating supplies in some buildings.
Jersey’s Government has opened Les Quennevais Sports Centre for non-members to have access to hot water and showers.
This current outage adds to the current Island Energy issues of poor service, billing, increasing prices and a dwindling customer base.
Island Energy customers can call their Glasgow-based customer service line on 01534 755500.
