limited type private subsidiary of esb group industry energy founded 25 october 1991 headquarters northern ireland revenue 693.2 million 2006 operating income 117.6 million number of employees 351 2006 parent esb group website http www.nienetworks.co.uk northern ireland electricity networks limited nie networks is the electricity asset owner of the transmission and distribution infrastructure in northern ireland . nie networks does not generate or supply electricity . nie networks is a subsidiary of esb group . nie networks has three transmission interconnectors with the electricity supply board transmission grid in the republic of ireland . the main interconnector with the republic of ireland was built in 1970 between tandragee and louth but the troubles saw the interconnector destroyed in 1975 and left in that state for twenty years until repair . 1 nie networks should not be confused with power ni its own former supply business which was not part of the sale to the esb and remains owned by viridian . nie energy changed its name to power ni on 25 july 2011 as esb retained the nie name in northern ireland . 2 this was changed to nie networks in 2015 . contents 1 history 2 network monitoring and control 3 incident management 4 customer communication 5 see also 6 references 7 external links history edit in 1973 the northern ireland electricity service nies was formed as a public utility to generate transmit and supply electricity to northern ireland . during the ulster workers council strike in 1974 when electricity supplies were severely disrupted the government considered generating power using royal navy nuclear submarines in belfast lough but the idea was abandoned as being technically unfeasible . 3 in 1991 the company was incorporated as a government owned public limited company northern ireland electricity plc. in 1992 the four power stations at belfast harbour ballylumford coolkeeragh and carrickfergus kilroot were demerged and sold . in 1993 the remainder of nie transmission supply and retail businesses was privatised as northern ireland electricity plc. in 1998 northern ireland electricity plc became part of viridian group plc with northern ireland electricity now a subsidiary of that holding company . nie networks supplies electricity to approximately 840 000 homes and businesses in northern ireland . nie has often been criticised for having the most expensive electricity in europe . citation needed this is attributed to a number of factors including the small population of northern ireland and the large areas of thinly populated countryside the company is required to serve and the network s over dependence on oil fired generation . citation needed the introduction of the single electricity market sem in ireland in late 2007 was designed to increase competition in the northern ireland market . citation needed nie networks sold soni the operator of the transmission network to eirgrid in march 2009 for 30 million . 4 in 2008 nie networks sponsored a new solar roof for straidhavern primary school through its smart programme . 5 in may 2010 nie energy supply announced that it will be running a scheme to help farmers afford solar power water heaters . on 7 july 2010 bbc news reported that esb is to purchase nie for 1 billion . 6 on 21 september 2010 it was revealed unionist politicians peter robinson and reg empey had written to the taoiseach objecting to the transaction . they said it was inappropriate and that it amounted to the purchase of a key component of northern ireland s infrastructure . 7 esb is a statutory corporation in the republic of ireland whose board members are appointed by the irish government . acquired by esb in december 2010 nie networks remains an autonomous organisation with its own board and management teams and separate regulation via the utility regulator . its transmission and distribution network consists of 45 000 kilometers of overhead lines and underground cables 75 000 pole mounted transformers and 258 major substations . network monitoring and control edit nie networks operates the distribution network from a primary control centre based at carn industrial estate craigavon county armagh . a secondary control centre in omagh county tyrone provides a disaster recovery facility and control is regularly assigned to the omagh control centre for testing . the primary control centre is staffed 24 hours a day and adjoins the customer contact centre and dispatch room . using the oracle utilities network management system 8 the control centre staff can monitor the status of circuit breakers and other assets in both the 11kv and 33kv networks using scada . a detailed computer model is supplemented by a large wall mounted mimic board which features led indicators showing the status of key assets and paper diagrams drawn by nie networks in house drawing team . much use is made of custom created information systems for reporting on the status of faults between the customer contact centre dispatch the control room and the incident centre . incident management edit nie networks has developed a set of procedures for dealing with major incidents such as storms and snow driven by the boxing day storm of 1998 during which 162 000 customers were off supply . 9 at the company s office in craigavon a small incident management room sits in a constant state of readiness . each week the duty incident manager meets with the other designated incident team members in charge of resources customer contact and network status to perform a risk assessment of the week ahead . the risk assessment takes into account the weather forecast provided by the met office notable events happening throughout northern ireland such as concerts or vip visits and any planned maintenance on the network or services required for the normal operation of the system such as it and telecoms . the team assess the risks and decide if any action should be taken to mitigate them . if any risk factor is deemed too high such as a strong chance of high winds over 45kts a pre planned escalation can be scheduled for the day in question . at any time if there are many concurrent faults the control room staff can escalate to an incident level . during an incident escalation the duty incident manager and their team man the incident room continuously and co ordinate operations between dispatch of linesmen and other field staff communications with customers and the media and resourcing . 5 % of nie networks staff are paid a retainer to be available on call . every member of staff has a secondary roll right up to the managing director . during a major incident staff may be called upon to fulfil their secondary role which may involve answering calls from customers in the contact centre or helping to co ordinate operations . customer communication edit one of the major criticisms levelled at nie during the boxing day storm was the inability of customers to obtain up to date and accurate information on the expected resolution time of faults and in many cases customers simply could not contact the company at all . to prevent this from happening again nie have retained eckoh plc to provide the high availability call answering system hvca from twenty first century communications . 10 this system automatically directs callers to an automated ivr system when all of the company s call handlers are unavailable . this system captures information from the caller to identify their premises and automatically links them to a known fault if possible . once tagged to a fault the customer is provided up to date status information by the automated system . hvca operates at the telecoms network level and means that thousands of simultaneous calls can be handled ensuring that customers never hear an engaged tone . normally staffed by 6 people during the day overnight calls are taken by the dispatchers the contact centre has the capacity to be expanded up to 70 call handlers during a major incident . the company is currently june 2016 experimenting with publishing live fault information on twitter 11 and provides updates from 9am until 4.30 pm during the week . from monday 13 june 2016 this will be extended until 6pm each night . see also edit energy portal list of irish companies energy policy of the united kingdom energy use and conservation in the united kingdom green electricity in the united kingdom electricity sector in ireland references edit morton robin 10 april 2002 . 12m power network . belfast telegraph . http www.nieenergy.co.uk index.php new name http www.nationalarchives.gov.uk releases 2005 nyo popup prem 16 146 doc10.htm esb sizes up north s power networks . sunday times irish ed . . 25 april 2010 . straidhavern primary school switches onto solar power . bnet . n.p. n.d. web . 14 october 2009 . http findarticles.com p news articles antrim times ireland mi 7783 is 2008 march 18 straidhavern primary school switchessolar ai n34970950 irish esb is to buy nie for 1bn political opposition to esb s nie deal . rt news . 21 september 2010 . northern ireland weathers the storm . tdworld.com . retrieved 2016 06 08 . april 2000 boxing day storms report pdf . ofreg . ofreg . april 2000 . retrieved 8 june 2016 . eckoh plc eckoh plc five year contract extension proactiveinvestors uk . proactiveinvestors uk . retrieved 2016 06 08 . nie networks nielectricity twitter . twitter.com . retrieved 2016 06 08 . external links edit official site v t e electricity generation in ireland companies organisations airtricity dublin bay power eirgrid ervia esb group huntstown power imera power northern ireland electricity premier power ni spirit of ireland sse renewables viridian group ni electricity generating stations aghada ardnacrusha ballylumford ni carnsore point coolkeeragh ni inniscarra kilroot ni kinsale road leixlip lough ree moneypoint poulaphouca ringsend poolbeg seagen ni shannonbridge tarbert turlough hill ni indicates northern ireland retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title northern ireland electricity & oldid 742343630 categories power companies of northern irelandelectric power distribution network operatorshidden categories use dmy dates from january 2012all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from july 2009 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 3 october 2016 at 04 18 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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