BBC: Millennium fears boost generator sales

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Thursday, November 4, 1999 Published at 12:23 GMT

UK: Northern Ireland

Millennium fears boost generator sales

Sales and rentals of standby generators double

Fear that the lights will go out during millennium celebrations has produced a boom in international orders for a leading Northern Ireland engineering company.

FG Wilson makes standby electricity generators which are shipped to 170 countries round the world.

The company, which employs more than 2,500 people at Larne in County Antrim, says its generator orders have doubled as homeowners and major multinational companies prepare for the worst.

One generator has just been dispatched to Udu Point on Fiji, an uninhabited area on the international dateline, which will be the first strip of land to greet the sun in the new millennium.

FG Wilson's president, Dick Nitto said the generator would provide power for a major New Year celebration at which 3,000 guests were expected.

He said: "The Fijian organisers are fortunate that they laid claim to a generator so early.

"Fear of the millennium bug, anticipation of loss of power on 31 December, and other concerns around the turn of the century have vastly accelerated sales to customers as diverse as domestic home owners and multinational industrial organisations.

"In fact every generator currently in production has already been sold".

FG Wilson, which was recently bought by the US company Caterpillar, makes generators costing from #2,000 to more than #1m.

The company says that sales have been particularly good in Israel, Scandanavia and the United States and there has also been a big growth in the generator rental market.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), November 08, 1999

Answers

It is my contention that is the one thing that doesn't stike me as beneficial. If we have any problems at all which I suspect several fuel will be the top one. A generator is only as good as its fuel. If you intend to store say 500 gallons of the stuff it doesnt store well for any long periods. It breaks down and turns into sludge. What fuel that will become available will be so expensive it becomes not practical. Better to think oil lamps, with the bottles of oil sold in stores, wicks, solar oven and maybe a camp stove with some bottles of propane or butane.

-- Susan Barrett (sue59@bellsouth.net), November 08, 1999.

It depends on how bad you think things will get. I bought a generator for "short" term outages. Snow storms and tornadoes and the like (plus a home building experience). If the Y2K problem causes outages less than a month then my generator has some value. If we have outages that last longer than my fuel supply then we're likely looking at a Mad Max or Postman scenario. In that case I'll be happy to have had the time to use up all of the frozen food.

-- anonymous (anonymous@anonymous.com), November 08, 1999.

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