Page 12 - Sphere No.30 (Dec 2011)

10 Sphere 30
Hong Kong’s first commercial wind turbine
is commissioned at Tai Ling, Lamma Island,
generating up to 800 kW of electricity. The
company also introduces the use of liquefied
natural gas as a fuel for electricity generation.
2006 2007
2008
The company acquires a 50 per cent
interest in Stanley Power, which has
stakes in six power stations in Canada.
The company co-develops wind farms
in Mainland China’s Dali and Laoting,
with a 45 per cent stake in each. This
is followed by the 2009 acquisition of
three power plants in the Mainland.
As the company acquired the status of a true Hong Kong
institution, it contributed to the city’s life in unexpected ways.
In the 1930s, the arrival at the company’s main coaling wharf in
North Point of racing ponies shipped from Australia provided
annual excitement among the racing fraternity. Some years
later the company’s wharf witnessed an even stranger spectacle:
circus elephants unloaded from ships in slings lifted by derricks.
The Japanese invasion of 1941, which brought dark times
to Hong Kong, gave rise to one of the proudest moments in
the company’s history. Following the Japanese landing on
Hong Kong Island, a volunteer force consisting of power station
engineers and veterans of former wars took up positions in the
company’s North Point power station. They put up a fierce fight
to hold up the Japanese advance.
Power station manager Vincent Sorby later died of his
wounds and many employees were interned in camps for the
duration of the war. Remarkably, though, the company’s records
survived intact, despite widespread looting and scavenging for
fuel. This was thanks to a one-time billings clerk who spirited
them away and hid them in his home.
As the nightmare of war ended, Hongkong Electric’s
Celebrated as the oldest electricity company
in the world to have operated continuously, Hongkong Electric
is Power Assets’ arm that lights up Hong Kong Island. It also
embodies an entrepreneurial spirit that goes back generations
in the city.
Its Victorian era founders were visionaries and risktakers
among the then British colony’s business elite who facilitated
Hong Kong’s rise as a modern centre for international
commerce in “the Far East”.
Pioneering businessman, urban planner and government
advisor Sir Catchick Paul Chater, who in 1889 co-founded
Hongkong Land, was among the first to see the merits of
introducing electric power to Hong Kong. He played a key role
in moving the project forward, eventually remaining a director
of Hongkong Electric for 37 years.
When the Hongkong Electric Company commenced
operations on 1 December 1890, residents experienced their
first taste of “pale daylight”, the original colloquial Chinese
name for electric streetlight. Its ghostly quality was nonetheless
considered superior to the illumination provided by (then)
prevailing gaslight.
Hongkong Electric –
lighting up an
ever-changing city