UPDATE: Thousands of Ross-shire customers hit by power cuts expected to have electricity restored this evening as 80mph gusts damage the network and trigger school closures and transport disruption
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THE vast majority of Ross-shire householders hit by power cuts caused by damage inflicted by severe winds of up to 80mph last night are expected to have electricity restored by this evening.
There had been a Met Office yellow warning for high winds last night and thousands of Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) customers found themselves without power in the small hours of Monday.
The largest fault affected around 2500 customers in Gairloch, Aultbea and surrounding areas of Wester Ross.
A number of schools were closed today– amongst them Gairloch High – because of power outages.
An SSEN spokesman this evening told the Ross-shire Journal: "Following severe winds of up to 80mph across the Highland area overnight, gusting strongest in the north west, teams from SSEN have responded well to network faults with supplies restored to over 5700 customers.
“The largest fault affected 2500 customers in the Gairloch and Aultbea areas of Wester Ross following damage to infrastructure which has now been replaced. Supplies were fully restored around 11am.
“As of 3.30pm, there were around 300 customers off-supply across the north of Scotland and we expect to restore all supplies by 5pm. We’d like to thank customers for their patience and apologise for any disruption.
“If anyone comes across any damage to our equipment, we ask them to please stay well back and call us on 105 and we will arrange for an engineer to attend and make everything safe.”
Power cuts still affecting swathes of Ross-shire
Power cuts in Ross-shire as SSEN battles to fix faults
