Jersey gas: 'Software error' caused island-wide shutdown

Island Energy says the outage at its La Collette plant was caused by a software failure

Gas will not be restored in Jersey until Tuesday at the earliest after a software failure triggered an island-wide shutdown.

Island Energy chief executive Jo Cox said its La Collette plant automatically turned off to protect the wider network - and back-up systems also failed.

She said gas would be restored in stages to remove the risk of air in the system.

This is expected to begin from Tuesday.

The company said vulnerable and commercial customers would be prioritised for the return of their supplies.

Gas was switched off for about 4,500 customers in Jersey on Saturday.

'Risk of air'

Ms Cox said returning supplies would take a long time because of the complexities of the system.

"The gas mains network being disconnected is a really big situation," she said.

"If you can imagine the radiators in your house getting air in them, when you turn your heating back on you have to bleed your radiators, so imagine that on an island-wide mains network.

"There is a very strict protocol with gas. It's not like you can switch it on and switch it off again.

"With gas, if there is any risk of pressure being lost in the network, you have to completely close and purge the entire system so you make sure you eradicate any risk of air in the network."

She said a "rogue code" had caused a power failure at the plant.

"Initially all we knew was that the power had seized in the plant, which meant the plant turned itself off to protect the network," she said.

Ms Cox said back-up systems had also failed.

"All of them failed at exactly the same time because of the code," she said.

"The chances of that happening is like winning the EuroMillions."

'Controlled and safe'

Islanders have reported significant disruption as a result of the outage, with restaurants unable to cook hot food and no running hot water in many homes.

The Government of Jersey said there was there was "minor but manageable" disruption to one of the wards at Overdale Hospital.

But it said it was still "assessing the impact" of the disruption on other government properties.

Island Energy said gas needed to be restored in a "controlled and safe manner".

"This means that from Tuesday we will start to bring customers back on to supply, a process that will likely take several days to fully complete," it said.