Sark electricity crisis

50Twuncle

JC_Derby wrote: »

How do they generate their electricity?

From (diesel ?) generators http://www.sarkelectricity.com/index.html

JC_Derby

Not sure what to make of all that, but not knowing the geography of the island etc just seems inefficient

matelodave

The island of Sark has an area of 5.45 sq/km which isn't everso big and a population of about 500 which again is not a lot so how do you think they could provde leccy 24hrs a day to the inhabitants?.

Diesel is the only practical way and I'd guess that the fuel has to be brought in by tanker (unless there's an undersea pipeline).

If the energy company cannot afford (or will not afford) to generate it for the price that's been imposed upon them then the indivudual customers will have to make their own arrangements. They'd have to get their own generators and supply their own fuel - which would still have to delivered to the island.

I've no doubt that doing it themselves will cost a significant amount more than they were paying before the cap was imposed and probably be less reliable as they'd have to sort out their own maintenace and fuel storage facilities.

Perhaps the channels Islands government, who got themselves into this situation will have to take over the running of the islands supply but they'd then have to compenaste the owner of the existing infrastucture.

Biggus_Dickus

What a dire situation for the islanders;:(

...just seen on the news that the Energy supply company owner is pretty adamant that he can’t continue and will shutdown completely at midnight tomorrow.

50Twuncle

It looks as if the UK military will be involved in supplying power to the island - unless the whole island is evacuated ?

joncombe

One solution could be to run a cable from Guernsey. This is done for one of the other channels Islands, Herm, but it is much closer to Guernsey than Sark.


However it does seem rather ridiculous that the regulatory has forced the company to cap their unit prices to below cost level.


Overpriced electricity isn't great, but I'm sure it's a lot better than no electricity at all, which seems to be all that is on offer.


Sark relies quite heavily on tourism and markets itself to some degree on things like the lack of cars, dark skies and so on. Doesn't seem compatible with a load of diesel generators chugging away all around the island!