Cork streets left in darkness as ESB struggles to cope with surge in renewables, Council hears
CorkmanA shortage of qualified technicians and the huge workload facing ESB Networks is leading to delays in getting faulty public lights fixed, a meeting of Cork County Council heard this week.
Council Divisional Manager Niall Healy told the meeting that 56 public lights around the county have been awaiting public commissioning by ESB Networks for more than 70 days.
Of that total, 44 are faulty existing lights and 12 are new lights that need to be connected to the electricity grid. East Cork and Fermoy are the municipal districts (MDs) with the largest share of lights that need commissioning with 17 each, followed by West Cork (7), Kanturk-Mallow (6) and Carrigaline (6).
Mr Healy said that when the local authority meets with ESB Networks, which manages the country’s electricity transmission and distribution system, “they're telling us that they're under massive pressure at the moment as there is increased electrification across the economy, everything from solar farms and wind farms and the connections there right the way through to EV charging points.”
“That has resulted in a massive spike and increase in their workload. And that's coming at a time when they're finding it increasingly difficult to recruit technicians. They're just very, very difficult to recruit at the moment because there's a shortage of qualified and competent electricity technicians in the country,” he said.
The council official was responding to a motion by Cllr Aileen Browne asking how many public lights in the county have been out of action for more than 70 days.
The Kanturk-Mallow councillor said she was driven by ‘pure frustration’, explaining:
“We had six public lights on the main street in Charleville that had been out of action since before the summer. We raised the issue at municipal district and at division level and continued to get the same response, that we were waiting for ESB Networks to come and complete their works.”
Cllr Browne described it as a “health and safety issue.” She said she picked 70 days “as it was mentioned to me by an official that that seemed to be the average time that they were waiting for ESB Networks to come and respond to a number of lights that were out of action.
"So it's 70 days from the time that ESB Networks have been notified, but the lights would have been out of action for a period of time before that, maybe a week or two, while the [public lighting] contractor came and did their work before identifying that they needed ESB Networks to finish the job.”
Cllr Tony O'Shea seconded the motion. “We all in our MDs agreed public lighting programmes at the start of the year and lo and behold, we're very fast to have the pole standing and the light on the pole but we're months upon months waiting for them to be connected in.
"We delivered the good news to residents that we were putting so many extra lights into an area and lights go in in March or April but we don't have a connection until October, November.”
Councillors shared similar stories of faulty public lights from their MDs. Cllr Eoghan Fahey said “there are lights out in an estate in Passage West for over 12 months and it's the ESB holding it up, the whole section of the estate is in darkness” while other councillors mentioned broken lights in Fermoy, Beara and other parts of West Cork.
Mr Healy said that ESB Networks has committed to allocate at least one day a month to work on public lighting faults.
“We've got commitments from ESB management, which is very positive in terms of making certain days available and making technicians available to work with [public lighting contractor] Electric Skyline. That's paying dividends. We can see the improvements,” he said.