
Teams have been working diligently since first light to continue to assess, repair, and restore electricity to homes and businesses across Central and Southern Scotland. Our progress today has meant that 99% of customers are now back on power, with 2,964 remaining off supply. We undertand that this has been a testing time for all involved and moving restoration times have been frustrating for those who await power. Each fault continues to be assessed, planned, and resourced as quickly as possible. Sometimes, when we’ve repaired a high-voltage section, it has exposed further low-voltage faults on the line, which then must be reviewed, planned, and resourced. The scale and challenge of the storm damage to our network has been the equivalent of 100 days’ worth of faults in just under 3 days. We continue to receive support from across the country, ensuring we’ve got as many skilled teams as possible to carry out the works. Our pre-storm work of building our stocks of poles, transformers, lines, and more has ensured we’ve got the equipment we need to get the job done. As of today, we’ve dispatched over 95,000 stock items to teams in the field to repair assets damaged in the hurricane speed winds. Our engineers have been working tirelessly – in some of the worst conditions they have ever faced – and to repair each of these individual faults is a mammoth task, especially when the weather has continued to bring challenges. The storm hit every single district in our patch, which is really unusual, and something not seen before. This means we’ve seen areas hit that haven’t experienced lengthy outages before. Some of the damage is in remote locations, where our engineers are having to walk for miles with their tools and equipment just to get to broken poles and damaged power lines. We know how difficult it is for those who are still affected by the storm and assure you all we’re using every resource at our disposal to get their power back as quickly as possible. The weather conditions have hampered our ability to get out to properly assess the damage and start repair works until it was safe to do so. Our customer service team has taken over 88,000 calls since Friday morning, taking the equivalent of 2 months worth of calls in 48 hours. We are actively calling customers to share updates on their faults and help them with either food or accommodation. We are checking in with our vulnerable customers, which includes door-knocking to ensure their welfare, calls, and have sent over 250,000 texts to check on wellbeing and safety. We have generators in communities and those are prioritised to those most in need and medically dependent, for example, life support. We have a number of food trucks which have made their way around communities over the past few days, and we continue to review their locations on a most-needs basis and move them to where they are needed most. We are also signposting to council-run warm spaces where these have been put in place. All of this information can be found here. We have invested billions in the electricity network to support resilience, but this was an exceptional storm. The red danger-to-life warning, the hurricane-speed winds, and the extent of the damage show just how significant it was. We do a lot of work ahead of winter to support resilience, such as maintenance, tech innovation, and even simple things like tree cutting near lines, all to help minimise the impact of storms. Where the power does go off, we focus on getting it restored as quickly as possible. So, as our teams work into the night and there will also be teams planning and preparing for tomorrow, and at first light, we’ll be putting more poles in the ground and keeping pace at getting those remaining customers back on supply. Thank you for your understanding and support Heather Heaton Stakeholder Engagement and Comms Manager Mob: +44 07407795329 |