Perth -based SSEN has announced that an additional £3.5 million in funding will aid network and community resilience to protect households from future storms.
The national energy provider added that “key improvements” have already been made to core customer and public communications processes following Storm Arwen in November.
In addition to the £4.8m in enhanced compensation already provided, SSEN has ring-fenced £1.8m for local authorities in the most affected regions, adding to the £500,000 boost to its Resilient Communities Fund, to be awarded this summer.
Around £1.2m will be allocated for additional network resilience investment, focused on enhanced protection of key circuits and contingency measures to help improve response times in future major storm events. Further details of the investment will be issued in the coming weeks.
It comes after energy regulator Ofgem and the Energy Emergencies Executive Committee (E3C) published reports last week slamming energy companies’ handling of Storm Arwen after hundreds of local homes went without power for several days.
The report follows a six-month review and contains a series of recommendations aimed at ensuring the same level of disruption does not happen again.
The handling of the storm’s aftermath also led to calls from locals for better resilience planning moving forward after villagers were forced to step in and help out vulnerable neighbours.
Ofgem’s report called the length of time people remained without power as “unacceptable” and lamented the “poor” communication received from network operators and the length of time it took for compensation payments to be made.
The report also found that while some companies did kick their emergency plans into place before Arwen took hold, these were viewed as “not sufficient” to deal with the damage caused by the storm.
SSEN welcomed the recommendations for network operators, resilience partners and policy makers contained in the publications, including the heightened focus on future resilience, and agrees that with increasing reliance on electricity through the decarbonisation of heat and transport, extended power outages are much less tolerable for customers.
Further collaboration will now take place between SSEN, industry partners and Ofgem to ensure the target of improved network and community resilience can be well defined and realised.
SSEN will also seek to implement any further lessons learned for the coming winter and beyond.
“Storm Arwen presented an unprecedented challenge for our customers, communities and our operation, causing damage to our network far greater than we had seen before,” said SSEN director of operations Mark Rough.
“I’m very proud of the way our teams dealt with this challenge, often in extremely hostile conditions, but also recognise that customers would like us to do better still in restoring their supply more quickly.
“We have already taken steps to improve our response through listening to our customers and will continue to implement any and all learnings for future events.
"The additional £3.5m in funding will support this aim, helping improve our operational response and support community members, particularly those most vulnerable, improve their own resilience.
“We will now work collaboratively with industry, community partners and policy makers to ensure the recommendations from today’s publications are appropriately reviewed, implemented and, where necessary, supported through the regulatory framework.”
