Electricity bosses are “very confident” that the remaining 450 properties in Scotland without power after Storm Gerrit will be reconnected on Friday.
Graeme Keddie, the director of corporate affairs at SSEN, said “hard work” by its staff has reconnected more than 45,000 properties who had lost power as a result of the latest storm to hit the UK.
High winds, heavy rain and snow damaged electricity networks in some parts of the country, but Mr Keddie said that by Friday morning there were 450 homes remaining without electricity, describing that as a “much improved picture”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he told how SSEN staff had “made a tremendous effort in restoring power to customers affected by Storm Gerrit, battling some very tough weather conditions”.
He said: “We have now restored power to over 45,000 homes and there are now 750 homes still to be connected. And we’re confident through the resource levels we have we can reconnect these customers throughout today.”
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He thanked those affected for their “ongoing patience” as the power firm makes its “final push” to restore electricity.
Storm Gerrit resulted in a “lot of localised faults” to the power network, Mr Geddie said, adding there were a “lot of points of multiple damage”.
This he said was “down to the ferocity of Storm Gerrit”, adding that wind speeds had been up to 10mph higher than had been forecast in some areas.
He insisted SSEN had been “well prepared” for this latest blast of wintry weather, but added that “we saw some wind speeds five to 10 miles per hour higher than predicted”.
Winds at Inverbervie, on the Aberdeenshire cost, reached 86mph during Storm Gerrit, he said – adding this was higher than the 78mph winds that hit the town during Storm Arwen in November 2021.
The latest storm was “more ferocious than forecast”, Mr Geddie stated.
But he stressed: “We’re very confident of getting all homes reconnected through the course of today. We’re got enough people and resource and we are absolutely committed in this final push.”
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