SSE said about 40,000 homes lost power yesterday but it had managed to restore around 29,000 by this morning. The firm warned that some customers in remote areas may be off grid overnight, when the weather is expected to worsen.
Scottish Power said around 100,000 customers lost power yesterday. It has managed to reconnect about 85,000 but the company warned that some homes are likely to remain off overnight. A spokesman said the high winds had meant roads were blocked by fallen trees and major bridges had been shut, making the repair effort even more difficult.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the spokesman said. “It is worse than the storms in December because we are getting much higher winds over lower levels.” He said engineers were having to deal with incidents such as a “roof hitting a substation”.
The spokesman added that almost six hundred faults in a single day was “something of a challenge”.