Power outage sparks firm defence

SCOTTISH Power has defended its service after two serious power cuts hit the city in as many days.

The company said the blackouts, which came after a day-long outage in parts of the city at the end of August, were unrelated and were dealt with as quickly as possible. It said that “1000 to 2000 customers” in and around Telford Road, Stockbridge, Inverleith, Muirhouse and Granton were affected by the outage on Tuesday night, which was due to a fault in the high-voltage cable leading from Telford Road substation.

The blackout began at around 7pm when households began reporting flickering lights, followed by the power going off completely at 7.34pm, and being restored around 8.20pm.

On Monday, hundreds of households in the south-west of the city were affected by a power cut that struck at around 11pm after a cable fault at Sighthill substation.

On August 26, more than 1500 homes were left without power for a whole day when two high-voltage faults hit the grid, with properties in Wester Hailes worst affected.

Inverleith councillor Lesley Hinds, who was among those affected on Tuesday, said she was concerned at the number of blackouts in different parts of the city in recent months.

She said: “It just seems a bit worrying that after 30-odd years I’ve lived in Edinburgh I can’t remember where we’ve had something like that where everything just goes off.

“To have that in quite a large area, even if it’s for a short time, I think we need to have an explanation, and if we can’t have an explanation, that’s quite worrying.”

A Scottish Power spokeswoman said: “We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused. Overall, the electricity network in Edinburgh is robust and works well. Recent faults have been unrelated and mainly due to cable faults on the underground network, which can be caused by a number of factors.

“We manage thousands of miles of power lines and cables and although there can be faults we have engineers on call round the clock to rectify any problems as quickly as we possibly can. We continue to invest in our network and are committed to continually improving our level of service.”

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