Page 19 - Sphere No.6 (Jun 2002)

I magine Hong Kong waking up without power.
Apartment lights don’t work; neither do electric kettles,
cookers or water geysers. Stumbling out into the morn-
ing, unwashed and hungry, the workforce is immobilised.
Neither the trams nor the Mass Transit Railway is running.
Escalators and elevators don’t move,TV and radio channels are
silent, industrial machinery has ground to a halt, and even the
stock exchange has ceased to function. By nightfall, instead of
being illuminated by its famous neon lights, “the city that
never sleeps” would be shrouded in darkness.
Thanks to Hongkong Electric Company, this scenario is
unlikely to occur, except perhaps in the imaginations of its
536,000 customers. For 112 years, the company has energised
the city’s live-wire Central District and maintained a steady
flow of power to the people.
Hong Kong’s emergence as an economic dynamo would
not have been possible without its continuous supply of elec-
tricity, delivered with unobtrusive efficiency. The company’s
enviable record stands as testimony to solid management and a
commitment to deploying the best technology.
“We are in the elite group as far as reliability is concerned,”
says K.S.Tso, Group Managing Director of Hongkong Electric
Holdings (HEH), Hongkong Electric’s parent company. “Last
year marked the sixth year in a row that the company achieved
supply reliability of 99.999%, a record that only a handful of
cities in the world can hope to match.”
For more than a century, Hongkong Electric
has provided the vital energy that has
powered Hong Kong’s development.
By Arun Sudhaman
POWER
TO THE
PEOPLE
HONGKONG ELECTRIC (1)