Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) can confirm its teams are doing everything they can to respond to a fault affecting its customers on Colonsay. The fault, which occurred in the early hours of this Wednesday morning, is affecting all 177 customers on the island.
Due to yesterday's weather conditions, all local ferry services were cancelled which has hampered SSEN's efforts to restore supplies. A mobile generation set to restore supplies has been on standby since yesterday morning, which due to its weight and size, needs to be transported by lorry. The next scheduled ferry is not due to leave Oban until 430pm today and SSEN remains in close contact with the ferry operator, CalMac, to explore all options to try and get its teams to the island as soon as is practically possible.
Yesterday evening, SSEN mobilised a helicopter to transport a team of engineers to Colonsay to carry out further investigations and attempt to restore supplies. As the fault has been identified on the subsea cable that supplies Colonsay via Islay, mobile generation is required to restore supplies until the cause of the subsea cable fault has been identified and any subsequent repairs have been completed. SSEN is therefore in the process of applying to Marine Scotland for an emergency licence to carry out the necessary cable inspections and repairs so the network can be restored to normal operations at the earliest opportunity.
SSEN continues to work with local resilience partners, offering support to its customers where possible, including free food and drink from the Pantry in Scalasaig.
SSEN would like to assure its customers and stakeholders that it is doing everything it can to restore power as soon as possible. If anyone has any concerns about customers who may be impacted by the fault, they are encouraged to call SSEN on 105 and its teams will do everything they can to help.