Thousands lose power

MORE THAN 2,000 homes and businesses in Lerwick, the central mainland and parts of the Westside of Shetland were affected by widespread power cuts on Wednesday.

While some premises in Lerwick were reconnected within an hour, most customers had to wait longer for electricity to be restored.

Power utility SSEN Distribution said two faults happening within half hour were the reasons for the outage.

In addition, an unrelated fire near a hydro pole at the top of the three-lane section of the A970 north of Lerwick delayed power restoration work, the company said.

A spokesperson said: “Following inspection, we are satisfied our infrastructure wasn’t the cause of the fire, though it was affected by it.

“Our engineers were then able to safely re-energise the network and all supplies were restored shortly after 1.30pm.”

The two faults were as follows:

1. Shortly after 10.30am a fault on the underground cable network in Lerwick caused the power to go off at around 900 properties;
2. At 11.05am a fault on the network between Lerwick and Tumblin caused the inbuilt safety equipment to operate, temporarily turning the power off to 1,150 properties.

An investigation into what caused these faults is under way.

The spokesperson added: “We’d like to thank our customers in and around Lerwick for their patience earlier today as our engineers worked hard to restore supplies following two faults on our local network.”