Around 2,700 homes remain without power

AROUND 2,700 properties in Shetland currently remain without power and are likely to spend the night with no electricity – with Voe, Whalsay, Brae, Yell and Unst the most affected areas.

A spokesperson for SSEN Distribution said, however, that more than 2,500 homes have been reconnected in Shetland after losing supply earlier today (Monday) following weather related damage to the overhead line network.

It comes after heavy snowfall caused significant disruption in Shetland, including on the roads.

The SSEN spokesperson said: “We’d like to apologise to all customers impacted and reassure them that we are doing all we can to restore power in challenging conditions.

“Our engineers will continue to reconnect supplies into the evening, remotely rerouting the network wherever possible, but remain hampered by blocked roads, communications issues and ongoing adverse weather.

“A further update, including estimated restoration times, will be provided at 11am tomorrow morning following a full assessment of the situation.

“We are proactively calling customers on our Priority Service Register and are working with local resilience partners to identify customers who may need additional support.”

The majority of faults have been caused by ‘line icing’, which is said to be a rare occurrence where, at a certain temperature, snow and ice sticks to overhead power lines and accumulates, adding significant weight to the lines and causing them to fail.

This has caused multiple points of damage on the overhead line network.