The project, which will begin on Friday 14 March and run through to mid-April, will improve the reliability of electricity supplies to nearly 1,000 homes and businesses between Uig and Dunvegan.
Over the course of the month-long project, teams from SSEN Distribution’s principal contractor, Aureos, will replace over 100 wooden poles and install new overhead lines which will make the local network infrastructure between Uig and Dunvegan stronger and better able to withstand the gale-force winds that are part and parcel of a typical winter on Skye.
For the safety of customers and the teams at work, it will be necessary to turn off the power where teams will be working on a particular day, and SSEN has sent letters to every address which will be affected, giving them up to 30 days’ notice.
As an extra measure, to ensure that teams can maximise the potential for additional works when the power is off, SSEN will be carrying out further repairs and maintenance on parts of the local network that would otherwise require a separate outage at a later date.
Beau Garry, SSEN Distribution’s Network Construction Lead, said:
“We’d like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as teams go about this essential project – work which will make the network stronger for nearly 1,000 homes and businesses across North West Skye. We appreciate that when we turn off the power it may cause inconvenience for some customers, but I’d like to reassure everyone that our teams will be doing all they can to keep disruption to a minimum, and if we can get works completed ahead of schedule on any given day, this may allow us to turn the power back on earlier than advertised.”