Storm update: 13.30 (10 Jan)

Treacherous and worsening weather conditions continue to hamper efforts to repair the electricity network in northern and western Scotland.

Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution has restored supplies to 73,000 customers, following hurricane winds of up to 113mph in places, which wreaked havoc across much of Scotland. The deteriorating weather has also brought heavy snowfalls and ice, making some roads impassable and access to the network difficult. On Shetland strong winds of more than 100mph are making it impossible for engineers to work safely.

Alan Broadbent, Director of Engineering, explained some of the challenges now facing technical staff: “Our electricity network was battered continuously by hurricane winds for eight hours on Thursday night and during much of Friday. This has weakened it in places, which caused more power cuts overnight. I know an apology may not be much comfort for our customers who have been without power, but I would like to apologise again, especially to those customers who have been off supply since yesterday, and reassure them that we are doing all we possibly can during extremely treacherous, challenging and severe weather conditions.”

Four Welfare vans and eleven mobile catering units offering free hot food and drinks, and in some cases charging facilities for mobile devices, have been despatched to areas worst affected by the storm. SHEPD has also hired a number of local businesses to provide catering on its behalf to those communities where the weather caused the most damage.

With the worsening weather picture, SHEPD has also boosted the number of engineers. On top of the thousand technical and support staff, 200 more were drafted in yesterday afternoon from SHEPD’s sister company in England, and also from other electricity network operators around the UK.

39,000 customers are currently without power in the following areas:

Keep an eye on SSEPD's live storm feed on their website for all of the latest updates.