Following yesterday's incident at St Clements Gardens, Walpole Road and Hamilton Road in Bournemouth, SSEN has successfully reconnected power to the majority of customers affected, with around 320 customers back on supply as of 23:00 this evening.
At around 6.40pm on Friday evening, a fault on SSEN's high voltage network resulted in approximately 470 customers losing supply. Following the initial incident call, SSEN worked continuously with all of the responding agencies to ensure the safety of the community and to start the process of restoring electricity supplies as quickly and safely as possible.
As of 11.30pm yesterday, SSEN safely restored power to approximately 200 customers. Due to the unusual and rare nature of the fault experienced, SSEN had to individually disconnect each of the remaining properties at the meter point before it could re-energise the power supply to those customers affected. Once this work had taken place, SSEN then had to check the integrity of the internal electrical installation at each property to ensure its safety. It was only once this work was completed could SSEN finally restore supplies safely for its customers.
Throughout this period SSEN proactively contacted customers who are on the company's Priority Service Register to check on their welfare, provide updates and offer additional support until their supplies were restored.
Supplies were restored in stages to those remaining customers from around 16:00 on Saturday afternoon and the only properties yet to be restored are those SSEN has yet to carry out the required essential safety checks prior to re-energisation or those where SSEN has been unable to gain access. Work will resume first thing tomorrow to complete this work for the remaining 150 properties, access permitting.
SSEN can now confirm the fault was caused by a piece of equipment at the local substation. Investigations are continuing to fully understand what caused the piece of equipment to fail and to ensure lessons are learned so there is no repeat.
Commenting, Jo Niven, SSEN's Head of Region, said:
"We would like to apologise to all customers affected by last night's incident for any inconvenience caused. I would also like to place on the record our thanks to the local community for the ongoing patience and inspiring community spirit they demonstrated in such difficult circumstances as we worked closely with our partners to carry out the necessary repairs and safety checks required before re-energising supplies to each individually property."
"Whilst we have identified the cause of the fault, our investigations do not end here and we will make sure the necessary lessons are learned to ensure nothing like this happens again."
"If any of the customers affected by the incident have any further concerns, we would encourage them to give us a call on 105."