We’ve now reconnected all customers in central southern England who lost power during Storm Darragh.
It’s been an extremely busy few days, as we’ve responded to widespread network damage. Since the storm first swept across the region early on Saturday morning, we’ve worked hard to reconnect 87,000 customers. Our one thousand-strong team has been out on the network and in our centres driving our comprehensive storm response.
Work continued throughout Monday to carry out repairs in communities where power had yet to be restored, with mobile generators being supplied alongside permanent repairs to accelerate reconnection.
We returned to ‘business as usual’ operating status at 11pm last night as the final homes were reconnected and work will continue over the coming days to bring our network back to full operational health.
The worst storm of the winter so far
Storm Darragh was a severe spell of bad weather, both in terms of the wind speeds it brought, and the length of time it lasted. Gusts of more than 70 mph were widespread in inland areas of central southern England; this is rare away from the coast. The wind speeds first picked up early on the morning of Saturday 7 December, peaked later that day, and remained high through to Sunday evening, when the Yellow Met Office warning for wind expired. Faults occurred on the network throughout this prolonged period.
Our response
Throughout the storm, we’ve worked hard to repair faults, and support customers who’ve been affected:
- We’ve deployed several hundred team members out on the network every day.
- We’ve taken calls from 20,000 customers in our Contact Centre.
- We’ve been in touch with almost 73,000 of our more vulnerable Priority Service Register customers to offer them help, guidance and support.
- We served almost 4,000 meals to customers via the hot food vans we deployed to several communities.
- There have been almost 240,000 visits to our website, where we’ve posted comprehensive, regular updates.
Eliane Algaard, SSEN’s Director of Customer Operations for central southern England, says:
“After an extremely busy weekend, Monday saw us work hard to reconnect the final customers who lost supplies during Storm Darragh. Some of these repairs were complex and localised, in pockets spread right across our large network area.
“With all homes now reconnected, I’d like to thank all our customers for their patience and understanding while we’ve worked hard in challenging conditions to restore supplies over the past few days.
“I’d also like to thank all the operational and support teams who’ve worked in all weathers on our response, and I'm grateful to our contract partners for their valuable involvement in our operations this weekend too.”
If you see any damage to our equipment, please stay back, don’t touch it and instead report it to us directly by calling 105, or via our Power Track Website, and engineers will investigate as soon as possible.