The Met Office has issued guidance to help people cope with power cuts should they hit during the cold winter months.
With weather warnings changing quickly, the meteorological experts are asking people to remain "prepared" and to stay up to date.
This comes as thousands of homes in Shetland were left without power due to significant snowfall on the night of Monday December 12.
While power has been restored to more than 2,500 properties, 3,800 homes are still off-supply as of Tuesday December 13.
This could leave Scots concerned about the potential of power cuts occurring with little or no notice as snow and ice continues to cover parts of the country.
The Met Office experts said in a blog post: "People cope better with power cuts when they have prepared for them in advance and it's easy to do."
Their advice is as follows:
- Switch off all electrical appliances that shouldn’t be left unattended, ready for when the power comes back on.
- Leave a light on, so you know when the power cut has been fixed.
- Check to see if your neighbours are safe and if they have a power cut too. If they have power, your trip switch may have activated.
- Wrap up. If it's cold, wrap up warm and close internal doors to keep the heat in.
- Portable heaters are a good alternative if heating systems are down.
- Call 105 for information, it’s a free service for people in England, Scotland and Wales.
They recommend keeping essentials to hand, which they say are candles and matches or lighters, torches with batteries and a mobile phone power pack.
There are also concerns around planned power cuts hitting next year if the National Grid Electricity System Operator struggles to meet demands.
National Grid boss John Pettigrew previously spoke at the Financial Times's Energy Transition Summit and warned that if power cuts do occur, they are most likely to happen in January and February.
He said that they could occur on the "deepest darkest evenings" although did stress that this was "unlikely".
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