Homes in Sutherland could be without power until 10pm as storm winds rage across north

Unplanned outages have been reported in two areas of Sutherland this morning as storm winds batter the north Highlands.

An alert was raised with Scottish & Southern Energy Networks (SSEN) at 8.30am this morning for a loss of power near Rosehall, by Lairg. With engineers yet to be on site, SSEN have advised that homes may have to wait until 4pm until power can be restored.

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A further fault, affecting the west coast near Drumbeg was reported at 9.48am, with an estimated repair time of 10pm.

Postcode areas affected by the outages include IV27 4EU, 4DH and 4NW.

A statement from SSEN said: "Adverse weather conditions including strong winds is impacting our network and is the likely cause of (power cuts). We have teams on hand to respond to the weather and the moment it's safe to do so, our engineers will work around the clock to get the power back on.

"In the background, we'll also be switching our network to restore power to as many homes as possible. We do this by remotely moving the flow of electricity around our network so that we can get the lights back on for as many customers as possible.

"Customers who are located near the damaged part of our network are then the customers who remain off longer until a repair is completed."

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