Popular Shetland Webcams site suffering due to repeated power outages
THE OWNER of a hugely popular website showcasing views around Shetland has warned the site could close due to the impact of ongoing power outages.
Shetland Webcams’ Andy Stevens said there had been “significant damage” to his equipment after a short but “serious” power outage in Shetland on Tuesday afternoon.
And Stevens said that repeated outages “may indeed be the end of Shetland Webcams” due to the money it requires to fix the equipment.
Shetland Webcams offers views from popular sites such as the Lerwick Town Hall, Eshaness Lighthouse and Sumburgh Airport.
Its ‘cliff cam’ at Sumburgh Lighthouse – more affectionately known as its ‘puffin cam’ – gives locals and tourists the world over the chance to see puffins up close during the summer.
But Stevens said this week that the endeavour could come to an end following several unexpected power surges and outages in Shetland over the past 18 months.
Large parts of the isles lost power at around 2pm on Tuesday, with SSEN Distribution saying that a brief fault had occurred during routine testing.
In a blog post on the Shetland Webcams site, Stevens said he was carrying out repairs and maintenance this week after his equipment was damaged in June during another power outage.
Some of the camera streams are currently down, including at Lerwick’s Victoria Pier and boating club.
Stevens said that while his cameras had been engineered to anticipate electrical incidents or communications failures, the number of power incidents in recent times had increased.
This was having a “direct impact on the cost and frequency of repairs,” he said.
The outage on Tuesday came while Stevens was preparing a major update on the network he said, with changes being made across many remote sites.
“Around 7-10 minutes into this work then all power was lost and it was also lost across many of our rural locations that were taking instructions from Lerwick,” he wrote.
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“It quickly became clear I had lost contact with the majority of our remote locations and the ones I could get into via other routes were now wrongly configured, brain dead or incorrectly routing traffic on the road to nowhere.”
Stevens said that a plan had been made to recover some of the locations, but “it will take time to implement”.
He added he will need to also visit some the remote locations to replace broken equipment.
“This is simply not sustainable financially,” Stevens wrote.
“What would be really useful is yet another power cut – a nice clean off and then on. I’m sure I won’t have too long to wait.”
A power outage in June led to Lerwick supermarket Tesco having to close, with another recent blip affecting Tesco’s ability to take contactless card payments.
There was also power cut in May which led to a major incident being declared at the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick.
Over recent months Shetland News has asked SSEN Distribution on several occasion to explain in more detail why the islands are experiencing more widespread power cuts, despite millions of pounds of investment into the local network.
So far, we have not had a response to those queries.
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