Residents of a rural area of south Donegal are hoping for a light of hope this year after persistent power cuts.
The Corlea area outside Ballyshannon has seen approximately 100 power cuts in the last year.
Residents say the long-running issue has impacted remote workers, put elderly people in dangerous situations and damaged electrical equipment.
Up to 150 people are believed to be affected by the power cuts, which can happen at any given time.
Donegal Daily has learned that the ESB is set to invest more than €150,000 in an improvement plan for the area.
Local resident Marcus Wilkinson, who moved to Corlea last year, said the power cuts are becoming increasingly frequent.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” he said.
“In this day and age people do work from home, and in the recent past people have had to work from home during the pandemic.
“You expect this in the winter time and during storms but it’s going on more and more, even during lovely weather. Now it’s three or four outages a week.”
Marcus who works as a systems engineer, said he has had important work calls cut off at random times.
“It’s frustrating for me while I’m working, but for other people who suffer, when power goes out they have major problems. I have injured myself whilst getting up in the middle of the night falling over in the dark due to a power outage. I also fell and damaged my furniture which cost €200 to replace. We have had damage to electrical equipment which has cost over €300 to replace,” he said.
“When we lose power we also lose water, because the pumping station is on the same electricity, it can be off for up to four hours at times.”
He added that elderly people and vulnerable people are put at risk when power cuts happen at night.
“There are vulnerable adults in the area that have suffered mentally with things due to the outages,” he said.
There is an added fear that the cuts will become even more regular in the summertime, due to the number of holiday homes in the area.
Donegal Daily reached out to ESB on the issue. A spokesperson confirmed that recent performance issues have affected properties fed from the ‘North Bank Upper’ outlet of Ballyshannon substation.
The electricity supply runs through an exposed area, they said, and the root causes of the unreliability include unusually adverse weather events, direct strikes by birdlife, as well overgrown trees in close proximity to the line. These recurring events can be exacerbated by the condition of, or absence of protection and automation devices on, the circuits.
Due to its recent poor performance, this section of the south Donegal network has already been prioritised on the company’s continuity improvement programme for 2023.
ESB has now completed a detailed patrol of the entire 207km length of this outlet. Follow-on work identified in this patrol is already underway and includes the replacement of several ageing transformers, lightning arrestors, the insulation of sections of the network with a known history of bird strikes, and extensive cutting of timber adjacent to the network.
“Whilst these works will greatly reduce the probability of faults occurring, we are also putting in place measures to minimise the duration and impact to our customers of any future faults,” a spokesperson said.
“Specifically for this area of the network, we are installing enhanced electrical protection devices and automated sectionalising and reclosing devices, reducing the number of customers affected when faults do occur.
“Finally, a new portion of network has been designed which will enable the interconnection of this outlet with others in the area, thereby improving the feeding options for customers in the area, thereby improving the resilience of the network. Construction on this new build will commence shortly.”
The works are expected to require a number of planned outages, but ESB confirmed that they will ensure that all affected customers will be notified well in advance.
The spokesperson added: “ESB Networks wishes to acknowledge the obvious inconvenience to customers in the area, thank them for their understanding and perseverance during the recent interruptions, and reassure them of our commitment to improve continuity of electricity supply in the Ballyshannon area.”
