Mr. John Fitzgerald:

The HVDC interconnectors are very sophisticated pieces of power electronics. There are convertor stations at both ends and many interconnectors can occasionally have faults on the cables, which can be serious. They can occasionally have difficulties with the converter stations.

After a routine two day outage of the plant in Woodland, there was a fault in the converter station. It was known about pretty quickly because it was an event on the power system. It was not a serious event in terms of safety or continuity of supply, but was noticed in the control centres. The scheme was out of service for a period of about four months while all of the equipment that had failed and was impacted by the failure was replaced and replenished.

It was a serious event for the interconnector in terms of trade. There were no adverse impacts in terms of security and supply. There are a number of claims with insurers and the provider of the equipment which are ongoing. While we restored the service as quickly as possible within the timeframes we had anticipated through acceleration, there are still ongoing claims so that the customers are kept informed to the greatest extent possible.