News / Power off for 800
ENGINEERS from Scottish & Southern Energy in Shetland had a busy Sunday night reconnecting customers following a “large” lightning storm.
Around 500 households in Tronda and Burra lost their power at 8pm after lightning struck the overhead network setting a pole on fire near Scalloway.
A spokesman for SSE said engineers managed to bring back power in stages, with the last customers being reconnected by 5am on Monday.
A second lightning strike near Brae at 10pm disconnected electricity supplies to 285 households in the north mainland of Shetland.
The spokesman said that most of the customers had their power back within 30 minutes, with the last 15 households being reconnected by 3am.
Engineers are still working on a number of “localised faults” and are also checking the network after what was described as “quite a large lightning storm” that caused damage to the overhead network, conductors and surge protectors.
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