Work continues to reconnect homes without power in the north-east
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Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks have made further progress in restoring power to over 7000 customers, including the main network supply to the following locations:
Braemar, Ballater (centre), Torphins (centre), Aboyne, Hatton, Tarland, Comrie, Fyvie
Since the start of Storm Arwen at around lunchtime on Friday, power has been restored to over 103,000 customers in total, with 17,000 customers currently off supply.
This includes 9700 customers in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, 3500 in Moray, 1600 in Angus and 1700 in Perthshire.
The majority of high voltage faults, connecting larger population centres, are currently being worked on and restoration is being progressed.
For localised faults, affecting single households and groups of houses, they expect full restoration to follow and are advising customers in this situation to consider alternative arrangements, if possible.
SSEN continues to work closely with local and national resilience partners to help coordinate the community response.
As part of this, support is being prioritised for the most vulnerable Priority Services Register customers.
In addition, the following welfare facilities will continue to support customers who remain off supply and will continue to provide hot food from 7am with teams using 4X4 vehicles to deliver hot food and drinks to customers on the Priority Services Register in some of the more remote and isolated communities:
• Aboyne, Old Huntly Car Park
• Alford, Transport Museum Car Park
• Fintry, Knockraich Farm
• Glenshee, Dalrulzion Hotel
• Kintore, Primary School
• Kirriemuir, Near Bon Scott Statue
• Rhynie, North Parish Church, Essie Road
• Strathdon, Layby at Bellabeg
• Tarland, The Square
• Torphins, The Square
• Turriff, Tesco Car Park
Where customers are unable to make use of these facilities and cannot stay in their property or secure alternative arrangements themselves, they will reimburse reasonable costs for food and hotel accommodation.
In order to obtain reimbursement, they ask customers to retain their receipts.
Mark Rough, Director of Customer Operations at SSEN, said: “We continue to make good progress following the extensive network damage caused by Storm Arwen, with additional teams assisting with restoration efforts and major connections made to locations such as Ballater and Braemar.
“Our engineers are still experiencing challenging conditions and multiple faults on individual circuits, with complex repairs underway that will take longer than normal.
"The extent of the damage is also hampering the ability to re-route the network to restore supply.
“We recognise that another day without power brings additional concern to those affected, and I’d like to apologise to all customers for the ongoing disruption and assure them that we are doing all we can to restore power.
"All available resources are being focused on this effort.
“We continue to prioritise support for vulnerable customers, through co-ordination with our resilience partners, and are also offering to reimburse reasonable costs for accommodation, where customers do not have any alternative option.”
With Customer Contact Centre lines remaining extremely busy, we continue to encourage customers impacted to only phone if it is an emergency or if they need extra help, to keep the line clear for vulnerable customers who may need extra support.
