South East teams help national response to Storm Éowyn

The staff and contractor teams mainly from across the South East and the East of England, travelled north at the weekend to areas including Scotland and Northern Ireland as part of the industry’s collaboration. 

Fifty mobile generators have also been driven to where they are most needed. 

UK Power Networks had extra teams ready to prepare for Met Office National Yellow Weather Warnings of wind, but the brunt of the weather and rare Red Weather Warnings hit other areas of the UK from Friday. 

Destructive winds over 100mph blew debris and trees onto power lines across Northern Ireland and Scotland in particular, making roads impassable and cutting off power supplies to hundreds of thousands of customers in what was reported as one of the biggest storms to hit in a decade.

Steve McDonald, director of field operations at Northern Powergrid, said: “Our teams have been working hard to repair the damage to the network across the North East, Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire and we’re grateful to our colleagues at UK Power Networks for their additional support. Once we have repaired the damage in our region, we will continue to collaborate with our industry colleagues to support the effort across the UK in getting the power back on for people affected.”

Travis Clark, a UK Power Networks manager based in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, is today working as a tactical resource coordinator with Northern Ireland Electricity Networks operating out of Enniskillen and Craigavon. The company also has teams with ESB Networks in Monaghan, Cavan and Galway.

Travis said: “Some of the teams are working in mountainous areas and others are in boggy terrain working in challenging environments at times. They are assessing and planning each job, working safely with local teams to get plant and machinery into place for repairs.

“We are finding an awful lot of trees down across roads and we’re clearing the way into sites for repairs. There are a lot of power lines down and there’s significant damage to the main transmission network as well as the 11,000-volt local networks, which we’re helping with.

“I supported the response to Storm Arwen in 2021 through mutual aid arrangements - and to me, this is on the same scale of damage and customer impact. We’re repairing the high voltage network first and there will be more damage on the low voltage network underneath that. 

“It’s going to take time, but everyone is working together well. The industry is pulling together to reconnect supplies as quickly as possible. At the ferry terminal a stranger shook my hand and thanked us for coming over to help.”

 

Published 29/01/2025

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