Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has moved to Yellow Alert for its north of Scotland distribution area.
It is expecting wind gusts of over 90 mph in the Western Isles, North West Highland, Orkney and Shetland from the afternoon of December 23 and into December 24. Other areas of SSEN’s network will see winds reaching 70 mph.
The DNO is increasing levels of frontline and support staff and moving response resources to the areas they will likely to be impacted.
Northern Powergrid is expecting winds of up to 70 mph across its region consisting of the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire during the same time period.
A further storm system of strong winds has been forecast by the Met Office and is expected to peak during Christmas morning.
Northern Powergrid’s head of network operations, Rod Gardner, said: “We’re monitoring the weather very closely and are already taking action to ensure that we have extra engineers ready to restore power and repair any damage to our network caused by Storm Barbara and further expected strong winds over the festive period.
“We will have additional advisors at our local 24-hour contact centre – who can be reached by calling the new, free 105 power cut number – as well as teams in other locations around our business who will be ready to offer our customers support and advice.”