Southern Electric Power Distribution teams have successfully restored electricity to homes affected by the devastating high winds and flooding that hit the UK on 23/24 December.
Engineering teams have now restored power to around 130,000 homes in total, with around 90,000 affected at the peak of the storm.
Director of Distribution Stuart Hogarth said: “In some of the most challenging working conditions we have ever faced our teams were determined to restore every customer’s home affected by the storm both safely and as soon as practically possible.
"Conditions were some of the worst we have ever seen with extensive widespread flooding, impassable roads and large fallen trees. Although we have now restored electricity to customers affected by the storm, our staff are still working in the areas affected to restore the electricity network to normal. We would like to thank our customers for their patience particularly at this time of year while we restored the electricity to their homes and the teams who have worked so hard.
"Because of the rural nature of our area we needed many staff to reach small numbers of outlying customers. Hundreds of staff have taken part in this effort both in the field and in supporting roles. We are now concentrating our efforts over the coming days to continue our restoration work on parts of our network which have been severely damaged and we will be using helicopters today to give us an aerial view of our network.”
Contingency plans and welfare arrangements have included:
- Over 300 operational and contracting staff working in the field to restore supplies.
- Communication with customers throughout the incident was of paramount importance - this was done by voice messaging, website, proactive phone calls, twitter, facebook and use of broadcast media.
- Tens of thousands of calls were received by our Customer Service Centre.
- There were over 1,000 damaged conductors on the network.
In Petersfield and Aldershot extensive flooding made access difficult and staff had to monitor the potential threat to equipment.
Throughout this time we have communicated to customers by working with local resilience groups.
- Around 95 tree cutting staff assisted to remove trees from access roads and overhead lines.
- Helicopters are being dispatched to patrol the network.
- Emergency Service Centre staff in Portsmouth and Perth manned up to answer customer calls and give updates.
- Help and assistance was available for vulnerable customers and proactively called.
- Our mobile generation fleet, supplemented by additional sets from contractors were deployed.
- We have received tens of thousands of calls from customers.
- The Network Management Centre was fully staffed with additional control engineers in place.
- We established contact with Local Authority Strategic Coordinating Groups to ensure vulnerable customers are cared for and kept informed.
- We had two mobile catering units moving around the Petersfield and Aldershot areas offering free hot meals and drinks.
- Two more vehicles were available in Aldershot and Petersfield area provided hot food, hot drinks and charging facilities.
- We offered to reimburse customers for hot meals who were affected.
- We will reimburse reasonable costs of hotel accommodation for those customers affected.
As always SSEPD will undertake a full assessment of this situation and future preparation and responses should severe weather hit again in the coming days.
On compensation:
Our focus has been on restoring supplies to those customers who were without power, and our hard-working engineers made good progress in the more remote areas where access was extremely difficult and the damage severe.
For those customers who accepted our offer we are reimbursing their food and hotel expenses, and can assure them that we will focus our attention on the issue of compensation. We acknowledge our customers were without power at a very important time of the year and our compensation payments will reflect this fact and also address any specific issues customers may have had on a case by case basis.
In the meantime if a customer has been off supply for more than 48 hours they should write to Customer Relations, SSEPD Walton Park, Walton Road, Portsmouth PO6 1UJ