As an area that has experienced a number of powercuts in the past year or so, you might like to see some information sent to us recently by Simon Oliffe at Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE). SSE are the providers of our local electricity infrastructure.
The majority of interruptions have been caused by trees coming into contact with our overhead power lines, this is regularly the cause in rural areas. The good news is that your area is on our tree cutting programme for this financial year, this should really help to limit the interruptions that you may have experienced. There has also been a couple of equipment faults on the network, which have been fully repaired at the time of the interruption. Our engineers are continually inspecting and maintaining the network to limit these types of interruptions, but sometimes equipment does fail as it is more susceptible to the elements on an overhead network. If you need more detailed information, please get in touch.
We are keen to promote our Priority Services Register
(which is free of charge) for any of your more vulnerable residents and to remind any existing members to ensure they have updated any new or additional information they may now have. Making sure everyone that may need our help or reassurance during a sustained power cut is important to us, as our customers are at the heart of everything we do.
The Priority Services Register sign up leaflet explains what we can do to help our customers. In a nutshell, those on the register will be kept informed during a power cut so they know when they can expect the power back on. We can assist in keeping them calm throughout an outage and provide hot water & drinks if necessary. And if an electricity supply is medically crucial, we will endeavour to provide a small generator to that individual.
In addition, we would like to refresh memories on the national 105 number to report a power cut, and our PowerTrack App, so anyone with a smart phone can log and track a power cut. We have found that not knowing how long a power outage will last is the major cause for concern. The App is continually updated to advise of the estimated time of power restoration. We also want to recommend that all residents have either a mobile phone, or a basic analogue home phone, as modern house phones that are plugged into an electrical socket do not work at all during a power cut and can leave people feeling very vulnerable.
SSE advises putting together a 'Grab Bag' that is ready to go, should you have to leave your home quickly because of an emergency. See what they suggest including here.
General information leaflet
'Be Ready Together'
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