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After thousands of islanders were affected by a system failure that shut down the island's gas network over the weekend, Island Energy's CEO has explained what needs to happen to get the gas back on, what went wrong, whether compensation could be paid, and whether the company’s communications have been right this weekend...
Jo Cox is urging domestic gas customers to help themselves, and the 4,000 other households on gas, to get reconnected to the mains by turning a lever by their meter and registering that they have done it.
By doing so, the mains supply could be turned back on this evening. If gas supplier Island Energy is not satisfied that the network is safe, some customers could be waiting over a week to be reconnected, as Jo Cox explained in this comprehensive interview with Express...
“The speed of reconnection depends on which route we take. There are two routes: there is self-restoration, which means we are reliant on the individual domestic customer, and there is engineer restoration.
“We have our commercial customer base and there is the domestic customer base. The commercial customer base, like care homes, hospitals, schools, hotels etc, will have a visit from an engineer irrespective of whether we go self-restoration, or engineer restoration.
“All of those commercial properties, around 400, have been visited by an engineer and had their meters turned off.
“The domestic customers have been communicated with over the last 48 hours to say pull a lever on their meter.
“The reason that we’re asking them to do that is if we go engineer restoration, it will speed up the engineer restoration process, because we’re getting them today to register that they’ve pulled that lever. And we've got around 4,000 domestic customers that we need to pull that lever.
“In the property in your meter, there’s something called an LPCO, which is a low pressure control operation. What that is, is that if it detects a loss of pressure, i.e. a loss of gas to your home, it will automatically disconnect supply.
“So, there is already a failsafe mode in the local meter itself. So, our plant fails and our plant server moved into safe mode: that’s step number one.
“Step number two is the LPCO would also then fail at your local meter, and it would protect your home, so you’re safe completely whether you pull that lever or not.
“The reason I’m asking for people to complete that lever pull and register it with us is because when I do my risk assessment, I can say that of the 4,000 domestic customers that I’ve got connected, I also know there’s a third safety mechanism that’s been put in, which is pull your lever, and I can count those people. That will help lower my risk assessment when I decide which route to take, whether I choose self-restoration, or engineer restoration.
“So, just be clear, my risk assessment on self-restoration is if I turn on, and I haven’t sent in engineer to go to your home and check that all your gas appliances are off, what is my risk?
“Your risk is not your boiler; your risk is your gas appliance, i.e. a cooker. If someone has accidentally left a hob on or a cooker on that’s blowing out an open valve, i.e. gas blowing out, what should happen is your LPCO should detect that you’ve got an open end, as we call it, and it will automatically not connect.
“Now, the reason that that’s important is that I am getting a third party from the UK to assess the risk around an LPCO not working.
“My risk assessment is: have you left your cooker on accidentally in the middle of the night? And if you’ve left that cooker on, have I taken every single measure to make sure that I’ve informed you that you need to check your cooker is off.
“If you ignore all my communications, and I turn your gas on, what is my risk of the LPCO not doing its job?
“Now, I’ve been advised at present that the LCPO wouldn’t fail and turn you on; it would fail and not to turn you on.
“So that’s the risk assessment I’m doing. My entire decision making is if I choose to just turn the mains back on, how many customers do I think I have a risk of not having left a gas cooker on in the middle of the night; it is not related to your boiler in any way.
“To get me comfortable, I’m having two third parties specialists in the UK to verify my assumptions on my risk assessment.
Pictured: Island Energy Group CEO Jo Cox said she accepted that communications could have been better.
“All of that I’m taking my time because you can imagine as a CEO, the buck stops with me. And I do not want to make the wrong decision because I’ve got 4,000 customers keen to have their gas back.
“I have to make a decision based on my safety percentage that I think: ‘What are the probabilities of customers have left their gas cooker on and am I prepared to make a decision that self-restoration is the right plan of attack?’
“If I decide at the end of today, my risk assessment gives me comfort, and that’s been verified by all parties, and I’m going to say yes, self-restore and turn the plant back on, it means everyone goes on exactly the same time.
“Once the main supply is switched back on, those domestic customers who have turned their lever off, go to their meter, and they turn it back the other way.
“So that is all the communications that we’re planning.
"However, we’re also planning for a worst-case scenario, which is: what if I decide tonight, I am not comfortable with the percentage of risk and I activate all my engineers to go and do an engineer restoration.
“So, I’m saying I’m not comfortable with the percentage risk. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to visit 4,000 times with my engineer base. Now, there’s still a risk in that because some properties are empty, and some people have gone on holiday.
“Now I would argue they probably weren’t cooking at four o’clock in the morning, when the gas supply went off. But there’s still that risk. And I’ll never get to 100% no risk, because there are some properties in the many years that we’ve been supplying gas that we’ve never had gained access to.
“So, I have to balance scenario A versus scenario B: what's the percentage risk against both? And am I prepared to make the right decision?
“I’m not prepared to do that on my own, so I’m having that verified by two other parties. So, I can say: 'Are you comfortable that I have followed every single risk analysis that's necessary?'
“I've also spoken to HSI offices this morning and across the UK and said: ‘Here’s my plan, do you think I need to factor in everything else?’
“So, they’re aware of all of my risk assessment and the categorisation that I'm putting against the risk assessment, and they've given me further guidance. And Rockwell, who provide our control panels, need to actually physically correct the code in the plant without accessing remotely. We have taken measures to fly them in."
“All commercial customers have to get a visit anyway, so they are out of this particular picture. What you’ve got is 4000 customers who need a visit.
“We will do two things: we will prioritise combination boilers, so it’s around 900 of those, because they’re not currently receiving hot water.
“Of those 900, we will prioritise vulnerable and priority registered customers.
“My second message is if you think you’re vulnerable, and you haven't registered already that you’re a priority customer, get online and register yourself or call us and say: ‘I believe I’m priority because I’m vulnerable’.
“We do have a database already that says this is a priority customer, because most of those customers have already registered with us, but if they haven't, they should, because if we go for Plan B, priority customers, vulnerable customers, and combination boiler customers go first, because they’re without hot water.
“So we’re scaled up an additional 30 engineers ready for Plan B plus our existing workforce.
“We know that we can probably tackle those top priority customers in the 900 in the space of 48 hours.
“Realistically, to get to all 4,000 customers, it could take between five and eight days as long as I parachute in those additional engineers from the UK. We have been planning for Plan B.
“It’s really important that if I get a sense that through this afternoon, I’m not going to be able to make a go / no go decision. At the end of the day, we will be updating customers earlier that it's likely that there'll be off for Tuesday as well. I will only make the decision of go / no go tonight, if I’m very comfortable that we have all the data."
“We don't access our controllers, we have a third-party supplier, and only they can access the controllers. So those controllers are not on the web, so no one can access them, so it’s not hacking, it’s not a cyber-attack.
“When we do any updates, our third party remotely dial in to our controllers, and they do the updates for us.
“So, what we did is we engaged that third-party supplier, because what happened was all three controllers went at the same time, it knocked out the power and the plant shut down.
“What happens is, when the power goes to the plant, the pressure starts dropping. And the reason that the plant fails into safe mode is because you risk air getting into the system.
“So it immediately goes into failsafe, which is exactly what it's supposed to do, because it says, I've detected a change in pressure, I'm going to shut down.
“What we then have to understand is what knocked out the power in the first place and why of all why has power gone to all those control units?
“And after five hours of interrogation to those control panels, we found a rogue code. And we don’t know how the code got there, whether it's always been sat there in the background, and it’s suddenly surfaced.
“And that’s the root cause analysis we've got our third party finding out; how did that code get there didn't get there? Was it when they were doing their last update? What is the code? How did it happen? Why is it happened? We're doing a full analysis of why the code got there in the first place.
“There was no issue with the gas at all. We monitor our gas composition all the time. And those control units when we’ve tested them back on, we know it is one of the control panels, but the gas consumption is correct.
“We don’t believe this a cyber attack but we can’t rule out that, when we were doing the last update, someone didn’t hack in and put the code there and it was unnoticed, but, personally, I don’t think that’s what's happened.
“I think it's something that’s aged sitting there because it’s a number, so we have to understand how that number got there because the number was so big that the control panel didn’t know what to do with it and kicked into shutdown mode.
“We’re working really closely with Rockwell. They've tested that the patch to correct the code and it does work, which they tested outside of the plant. We know that the code works, what we just need to be really 100% confident on in our risk assessment is are we 100% sure that that is what’s caused the error? That’s why it takes time.”
“The first thing on my mind is let’s restore, then what I want to do is how long were people off for. Within our terms and conditions for domestic customers, it’s clear that compensation isn't part of those terms and conditions. However, if you’ve been affected, I'll be looking at compensation on a case-by-case basis, okay. A lot of people still have got hot water.”
“No, not in Jersey. We are a private company and are unregulated.”
"This incident is not linked, and Haut du Mont still hasn’t been proven it was gas. This is entirely about plant and the control panel. When it comes to the response, of course, obviously that will feed into my decision-making. My job as a CEO is to be incredibly cautious on every decision we’ve made, because of the severity of making a wrong decision.”
“No, I don't; I think we were too slow. I take that on the chin. When I got first alerted, my immediate reaction was what’s happened and how quickly can we get the plant back online?
"What we should have done is put a hold notice on our social platforms and our web pages saying we are aware of the problem. But I was too focused on what's the problem and how can we get the plant back online?
“I did engage our PR and Comms teams straightaway but what I should have said is get hold to notice on. After 09:00, I think our comms got much better, because we started communicating on a regular basis. But I absolutely accept that we were too slow."
“My key message is that customers can help us with the speed of restoration by pulling that lever and registering that they’ve pulled it. It’s really easy to do and there is a video on our website showing how it’s done.
“We had a call with the Government this morning and they’ve been fantastic. Friends and family can help, but I urge them to please register on the person’s behalf.”
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