Standard content for Members only

To continue reading this article, please login to your Utility Week account, Start 14 day trial or Become a member.

If your organisation already has a corporate membership and you haven’t activated it simply follow the register link below. Check here.

Become a member

Start 14 day trial

Login Register

Storm damage worse than December says Scots Power as roof hits substation

Around 40,000 homes are still without power after severe storms in Scotland yesterday. Scottish Power and SSE have deployed over 1,200 engineers to try and restore supplies but have warned that some homes are likely to remain off power tonight.

SSE said about 40,000 homes lost power yesterday but it had managed to restore around 29,000 by this morning. The firm warned that some customers in remote areas may be off grid overnight, when the weather is expected to worsen.

Scottish Power said around 100,000 customers lost power yesterday. It has managed to reconnect about 85,000 but the company warned that some homes are likely to remain off overnight. A spokesman said the high winds had meant roads were blocked by fallen trees and major bridges had been shut, making the repair effort even more difficult.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the spokesman said. “It is worse than the storms in December because we are getting much higher winds over lower levels.” He said engineers were having to deal with incidents such as a “roof hitting a substation”.

The spokesman added that almost six hundred faults in a single day was “something of a challenge”.