40,000 homes in Scotland without power after back to back storms

40,000 homes in Scotland are without power after back to back storms crippled much of the network.

In an update Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said they remain at Red Alert status for its north of Scotland licence area due to the significant damage caused to network infrastructure as a result of Storms Malik and Corrie.

Power has been restored to 1,100 customers who were off supply as a result of Storm Malik on Saturday.

However, work is still being carried out to assess the damage and restore power following outage caused by Storm Corrie which brought extreme wind gusts of over 90mph across much of the north east, higher than both Storm Arwen or Malik.

Many remain without power in the north east.

SSEN confirmed that teams have been out since first light to assess damage and restore power.

As of 10am this morning, 40,000 homes were without power across the north of Scotland as a result of the two storms, with 7,000 still not having supplying from Storm Malik on Saturday.

Power has been successfully restored to around 68,000 customers affected by Storm Malik with the vast majority of outages from Saturday expected to be restored today or Tuesday evening at the latest.

38,000 customers have been affected by Storm Corrie overnight with 4,000 of these customers having their supply restored, with around 33,000 customers currently without power.

Around 19,000 of homes without power relate to two major faults affecting customers in the Stonehaven area and Deeside which are being worked on and are expected to be restored later today.

SSEN said restoration efforts from Storm Corrie will continue into Tuesday with the possibility that for small clusters of customers this may extend into Wednesday, subject to today’s damage assessment.

The main areas which continue to be affected are rural Aberdeenshire and the Angus border, with customers also off supply in Perthshire the Highlands, Western Isles and the Moray Coast.

Richard Gough, Director of Distribution System Operations at SSEN, said: “Our teams have continued to make strong progress restoring power to customers impacted by the extreme weather from Storm Malik, with over 90% of those customers restored.

“Whilst our teams are making every effort to restore customers as soon as possible, the cumulative impact of Storms Malik and Corrie has compounded the restoration challenge. As a result, we are advising customers that while expected restoration of customer supplies from Storm Malik remains Tuesday evening, restoration times for some of those impacted by Storm Corrie may now extend to Wednesday.

“We would like to apologise to all customers affected and would like to reassure them that all available resources have been deployed to support with restoration efforts and our teams are doing all they can to restore power as quickly as possible, where it is safe to do so.

“We continue to proactively contact customers on our Priority Services Register to offer extra support where required and work with local resilience partners to coordinate welfare provisions. I’d encourage any customer concerned to give our dedicated teams a call on 105, where we can provide additional support and guidance.”