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These companies are not really set up to respond to events like this though, are they? bills would be even higher than they are now if we had these guys sitting around for the 350 odd days a year that they wouldn’t be required.
I work for the Tree Cutting Department for SSEN, SSEN delivers the power to the door in the Northern part of Scotland, including Moray and Aberdeenshire.
Whenever there is a storm event the business puts people across the organisation on standby, positioning resources in the locations likely to be affected. This has taken place numerous times each storm season since I joined the business in 2016 and thankfully these events have been very benign.
Storm Arwen has been off the scale. Some of the SSEN tree cutters have been in the forestry industry for many, many years and this the worst event they have seen for the last 10 years or so. Teams have travelled up from SSE in the South and we have shifted tree cutters over from Argyle and up from Tayside.
So yes, SSE is set up to respond to events like this, however due to the sheer scale of the event it's taking time to for the teams to cut their way in through downed forests to access the power lines, clear the trees off of the power lines and in many cases rebuild the power lines.
just getting to the lines is a challenge.
we are not talking the odd downed tree round here - we are talking square kilometers of trees clear felled and in a tangled mess.
I work for the Tree Cutting Department for SSEN
Any jobs going? 🙂
One of our local forests. Just out of shot is the Beauly Denny line....
I work for the Tree Cutting Department for SSEN
Any jobs going? 🙂
Keep an eye on this page. No jobs in Scotland on there at the moment but they do appear frequently. PM me if you are interested.
we are not talking the odd downed tree round here – we are talking square kilometers of trees clear felled and in a tangled mess.
Yup, I was driving through entire woods gone strewn across power lines and the roads. Then the poles of power lines themselves snapped clean through, one after another.
@beamers - thanks to you and your colleagues for helping get the power back on. People don't realise how much effort goes into the provision of all of our utilities.
Re: your comment:
Storm Arwen has been off the scale. Some of the SSEN tree cutters have been in the forestry industry for many, many years and this the worst event they have seen for the last 10 years or so.
I'm sure that the guys are correct re: the last 10 yrs. However Arwen isn't off the scale, it's very much towards the lower end of the scale in terms of impact and widespread damage.
Arwen is essentially a localised but very disruptive storm in the context of European windstorms. The disruption has been to transport and utility infrastructures but thankfully there has not been too much damage to buildings.
We tend to have several large windstorms in most years across western Europe but in the last 10-15 years we've been quite lucky in that these damaging storms have occurred in places where few people live, so the general public tend to forget that we frequently get them. (I'm looking at this from a European view as these storm systems are massive and don't stop at national borders).
Arwen is small compared to the great storm of 1987 (87J is it's meteo name) where it felled millions of trees in the UK & France. When Storm Erwin hit Sweden in 2005 it caused a loss of 70-80 million cubic metres of trees..that's a lot of trees!!!
Why am I saying this?? .... well it's back to the comments above and my comments earlier on Covid. In the UK we are poor at communicating and understanding risk, as a society we ignore important stuff .......... like the weather forecast 🤦♂️
I’m sure that the guys are correct re: the last 10 yrs. However Arwen isn’t off the scale, it’s very much towards the lower end of the scale in terms of impact and widespread damage.
The scale I'm talking about is the number of supply faults and the time its taking to get the power back on:
^^ The number in each blue circle represents the number of faults in that area, if you zoom in then you see each individual one, like the red icons. 4th day of the response and there are still 286 faults, not all tree related, or storm related, but most will be.
More info on SSEN Powertrack
The disruption has been to transport and utility infrastructures but thankfully there has not been too much damage to buildings.
Are you being serious?
I’m sure that the guys are correct re: the last 10 yrs. However Arwen isn’t off the scale, it’s very much towards the lower end of the scale in terms of impact and widespread damage.
The reason there is less damage, is that it hit some of the most empty parts of the UK. Where it has hit villages, there is massive damage to that village. Seahouses, Beadnell and Bamburgh have took massive damage, hardly any property untouched. The ones with roof damage, may get worse as there are strong winds coming tomorrow, so the already weakened structure will probably fail.
If powerlines go down in an urban environment, then it's a relative easy fix.
When the powerlines are on a remote hill side, with blocked access and stuck under fallen trees, then it's a lot more difficult.
The problem was surely the wind direction? We've had years to knock over the trees near power lines etc. from strong westerlies. A big northerly is going to knock over a whole new set of trees not previously problematic.
Possibly partially that but 98mph wind hasn’t been recorded around here before so it would only be a partial contribution.
The reason there is less damage, is that it hit some of the most empty parts of the UK.
See also Storm Bawbag - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Bawbag
Arwen does seem to have been a beast, a combination of strength and wind direction. The impact and clear up is going to take months for infrastructure, years for forests.
As ever, the northern and less populous areas get less news coverage.
Can you imagine if this was Cambridgeshire and North London, the BBC would have multiple presenters out and rolling live newsfeeds...
The problem was surely the wind direction?
Very much this.
Its also worth noting that we don't routinely remove trees which are within falling distance of the network. We maintain them so that they don't grow into the vicinity zone (0.5m for some LV up to 3.5m for 132kV which is the big stuff on the steel towers).
Keeping them out of the vicinity zone means that they can be cut, by our tree cutters, safely and without the power needing to be turned off.
Removing all of the trees within falling distance would be a huge job, and not something that a lot of landowners would agree to anyway.
Having said that Storm Arwen has removed quite a few of those trees for us!
I feel your pain Drac - I'm a bit south of you and we've got no power but at least we're accessible and most stuff round here does have power. The chainsaw has been busy though. Must be harsh for people in more remote places (I always tell people we live on the edge of nowhere, middle of nowhere is about 30 miles west of us 😉 ). Good luck supporting them you're all doing a grand job!
On that note what is it with people getting on the case of the power companies on FB etc. ? As if they have 1000s of people just sitting around in pickups ready to go all year round FFS.
wind direction is a large factor, so are antecedant conditions, i.e. what went on beforehand - if the soil is saturated, trees in leaf etc.
For an individual who's house is badly damaged it's a disaster but when you look at the wider picture at a national level we got of lightly. Homeowners have insurance and they'll fix the houses (eventually).
If Arwen had a slightly different track it could have been a lot worse at a national level, there was almost coastal flooding/storm surge on the east coast caused by the wind, again this could of been worse.
On that note what is it with people getting on the case of the power companies on FB etc. ? As if they have 1000s of people just sitting around in pickups ready to go all year round FFS.
I have a local FB page where someone properly kicked off about it - until someone else pointed out that the process involved their son, chainsaws, a Landrover, wandering around dark hillsides in appalling weather, climbing over the fallen trees aware that there may be live power lines hidden, then cleaning up the mess, installing new cables/poles/insulators etc and connecting it all back up again physically, on the ground... The initial post about a 4 hour power loss was quickly deleted.
I do think some folk have no idea how such infrastructure works or what it takes to keep it working.
I feel your pain Drac – I’m a bit south of you and we’ve got no power but at least we’re accessible and most stuff round here does have power.
I’m fortunate as Alnwick has kept power most of the time, still not odd street off, I’ve also had no property damage or at least what I know of. I’ve not actually had a chance for a proper check with being nights. Lots have though including colleagues who got home 17 hours after leaving work to find their house had no roof. There’s masses of property damage from what I seen and that was just in the headlights as there was no power.
Good luck supporting them you’re all doing a grand job!
Cheers but it is literally my job. The smile on staff’s faces as I gave them a hot drink was worth it, it was like gave them a million pounds.
For an individual who’s house is badly damaged it’s a disaster but when you look at the wider picture at a national level we got of lightly. Homeowners have insurance and they’ll fix the houses (eventually).
We really didn’t I’m not sure your understanding just how much damage there has been.
Can you imagine if this was Cambridgeshire and North London, the BBC would have multiple presenters out and rolling live newsfeeds…
This is always brought up, people after the floods down south moaning that no-one would care if it flooded up north, then it flooded up north and there was loads of coverage.
then it flooded up north
Todmorden, all things relative, aint that far north...
😜
You must be exhausted @beamers . I’ll keep an eye out for utility felling jobs. I’d love to move to Scotland when the time is right, for now I’ll keep eyes peeled locally (though that advertised hourly rate isn’t great!)
Glasgow's been pretty clear, a bit of rain is all.
Far better than being stuck in a pub for three days with an Oasis tribute band. That must have been pretty harrowing.
As ever, the northern and less populous areas get less news coverage.
Can you imagine if this was Cambridgeshire and North London, the BBC would have multiple presenters out and rolling live newsfeeds…
Why is this supprising? Something that effects more people and is easier to access get more news coverage. It's not a conspiracy. There has still been pretty good new coverage from what I have seen / heard (I don't wantch TV so can't comment on that) but is been a long way from ignored.
@houns - The hourly rate isn't great, however there's a host of benefits that come with it, shares, discount schemes etc etc. Also, all kit and equipment, vehicles and fuel are provided, along with training as required. Some guys get their heads turned by the hourly rate they can earn working for contractors, however in most cases they have to pay for / provide all of the above themselves. Plus the amount of work can be inconsistent.
Our guys work throughout the year and all they have to provide themselves are their undercrackers.
(I'm an office drone by the way, providing admin support / co-ordination to the field staff. I'd more than likely end up as a casualty if I started wielding a chainsaw in anger!)
Ah yes the thought of my own truck and kit is appealing!
^^^ Pretty close @ElShalimo:
I'm just jealous. I can't be trusted with scissors never mind a chainsaw
Can you imagine if this was Cambridgeshire and North London, the BBC would have multiple presenters out and rolling live newsfeeds…
To be fair to the BBC I tweeted that I'd had a shrub blown over and they did send a news crew. They're also planning a 6 part documentary about it. Tom Hardy will be cast as the Potato Vine and Stephen Fry will be doing the voice over. They've asked me not to post any photos as southern viewers would find it too distressing without the five part build up to the traumatic event.
The great thing about chainsawing is it's like bikes. You can pick a brand/ cc/bar size and be a dick about it.
Huskys for the win do I see @beamers? Wait... Nope. One of each. How do you cope?
As long as it’s sharp, starts, has enough grunt and is safe I don’t care
Chatting with my buddy Clark from Bennachie Bike Bothy sounds pretty tough in Aberdeenshire, but also sounds a lot like people aren't getting off their backsides and helping themselves in many cases! Overall though sounds like a sterling job being done in the 'Shire to help out the local communities and get things back on track.
Clark and the team have done a sterling job gathering supplies and distributing out to the area setting them selves up as a drop in centre.
There is an aspect of folk not even bothering to report faults. One of my neighbours is having a moan they have no power -the faults not logged on the system.
They didn't realise they were house 1 of 1 on the end of that line that had no power *someone else will do it*
Does anyone know if the Puffer course has been impacted?
The power companies are doing an amazing job, given the pure scale and damage done. Still a few locations around here without power, they’ve been told maybe Friday. Even parts of Alnwick high street and houses behind it only came back on last night.
Does anyone know if the Puffer course has been impacted?
I don't think so. A friend of mine went round it last night and didn't mention any issues.
but also sounds a lot like people aren’t getting off their backsides and helping themselves in many cases!
Parents of one of my team at work are from the 'shire. Apparently they and neighbours have been out and cleaned up access roads - handsaws, some chainsaws, lots of folk using caravan/camper/BBQ to make meals, warmth and cuppas, and sharing the help out., taking elderly to appointments etc.
One set of neighbours though is resolutely sat in a cold dark house moaning that the council and energy companies are crap - and then not turning out to help anyone else who is actually getting on with things as they can...
Does anyone know if the Puffer course has been impacted?
I don’t think so. A friend of mine went round it last night and didn’t mention any issues.
So I'll need to find my own excuse for bailing out rather than being offered one on a plate.
It’s been lively for a bit round this manor. Only just got online as we’ve finally relented and moved into the Swan at newby bridge.
Should be back on temp power Friday afternoon. It’s been a mess. 40 trees fallen on the Lane to our place. That takes a bit of clearing.
Still it’ll be sorted soon enough.
Can you imagine if this was Cambridgeshire and North London, the BBC would have multiple presenters out and rolling live newsfeeds…
Stonehaven area off again yesterday till noon tomorrow apparently.
BBC Scotland news on Friday had a silly reporter doing a live report from somewhere very windy. It was lashing down and she had on a down jacket. No idea what point was being made apart from its bloody windy. Finished with "police are advising people not to travel" hopefully the reporter and crew lived in that town.
BBC Scotland news on Friday had a silly reporter doing a live report from somewhere very windy
The one I saw ...it was a he and he does live locally.
A Northern Powergrid van is on the hillside below my house... could it be? Will I be reunited with electricity? Only time will tell...
Still a few homes off up here and tragically one death, possibly due to no power and heating. 😞
🙁
News at lunchtime indicated the army were being involved?
I appreciate they may not be able to provide all the specialised support needed, but we do seem to consistently leave it very late to involve a national resource of fit, active and available pool of people who xan follow instructions.
Still a few homes off up here and tragically one death, possibly due to no power and heating. 😞
😞
A friend of mine in Ford said he knew of one elderly lady who'd been found, alive thankfully, after a fall at the weekend by someone in a 4x4 checking remote houses
I appreciate they may not be able to provide all the specialised support needed, but we do seem to consistently leave it very late to involve a national resource of fit, active and available pool of people who xan follow instructions.
As pointed out by our local councillor, they’ve been avails and offered from the start but they’re not trained up to deal with dealing with power lines.
We are back on as of yesterday afternoon, it’s taken a bit of time but ENWL have been pretty good with comms and making sure hot food was available after a bit of a slow start.
I appreciate they may not be able to provide all the specialised support needed, but we do seem to consistently leave it very late to involve a national resource of fit, active and available pool of people who xan follow instructions.
They don't deploy for free and they cost a lot. All goes on your council tax bill.
On a related note, it doesn't affect me much as we're pretty self sufficient (Now have boiler and pumps wired into the genny too so we're kind of back online in most ways) but it was noticeable that when I have received 'welfare' calls from NPG they couldn't get off the phone fast enough without even asking if we needed anything. It made me chuckle that the welfare call consisted of
'Hi its NPG, this is a welfare call. Is your power Back on?'
'Nope, not yet'
'OK I will make a note of that, thanks for taking the call'
'OK... Bye'
Its good to get a call, but with this approach they're going to miss a lot of vulnerable people too polite or proud to just start having a go at them down the phone (which I suspect is the other response they'll get).
Ben, There is a register of vulnerable customers (the PSR) so we should be able to prioritise understanding who is vulnerable. We won’t, in the quarter of a million premises were off supply, always get it right - but we are trying. There’s There’s around 2,500 NPg employees and a good proportion of them were out in the field or running the operational control centres (plus contractors and guys we’ve call on from other DNOs under the mutual support arrangements - you may have seen pictures of UKPN vans). Probably a couple of hundred of our people were (are) doing those call backs. When they know your off they don’t want to chat, they want to update the info being fed to the field staff as to where to focus efforts. It might sound abrupt, but it’s very tired people working flat out who just want a specific piece of information so we can sort the problem.
My own staff have been working 16 hour days since last Friday now.
As of last night over 230,000 premises had had their power restored - a think it’s around 233,000 now. We’re working on the rest.
And once we do, there will still be a good deal of network rebuilding to do, and a lot of work for me to understand how we reduce the chances of this sort of thing happening again.
For us the 2015 Leeds floods affected supplies less than the 2007 Sheffield and Hull floods which in turn had less effect than the 2000 Selby floods - albeit the 2007 floods did cover more regions - because of the network and asset changed we made.
We do care, we do listen, we do learn and we do act.
I’ll feedback your comments to the lady who runs the call centre.
PS - I got a “your bike is being built” email. Thanks 👍
And I didn’t want to sound quite as grumpy as I did.
Frustration on my part as, for good reason, I’m not as involved as I was in those floods in 2000, 2007 and 2015.
There are photos at work going around of what look like a 132kv steel pylon toppled over and the power cables have pulled down phone lines!
There was a better one but I can't find it...
[img] 
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At a guess that’s a 66kV Riley and Neate.
Looks too small to be 132kV, but it could be the photo.
If it’s north east England I’m probably right, Scotland I’m probably wrong.
A week without power now for some of our friends & others locally. Still no phone lines either for some, but water for most came back on Tuesday night. Has been snow lying for 3 of those 7 days and 2 others below freezing at times - there is a real risk for vulnerable people in this situation. I know of one person (in their 60s, mobility issues, lives alone but can't move out as has animals to look after...) who resorted to sitting in the car overnight with the engine running while it was charging up their phone as it was warmer than the house. And they could then get through on the emergency response line at 2 in the morning.
I appreciate that there is a lot to deal with and anyone on the ground is run of their feet doing dangerous work in difficult conditions, but communication has been poor. I'm on email/text updates for several people who have no phone/internet access (some with no mobiles or mobile signal etc) and have heard nothing from Northern Powergrid directly for 90% of them. One has been visited (today, 6 days after reporting power lines down and at the time burning the ground around them) and another earlier in the week, but the rest have to rely on hearsay. Latest website updates are suggesting the 5th at 10pm for most to be reconnected - but then that has been revised back more or less every 24hrs so far.
It's curious that Boris Johnson could find his way to Northumberland in order to wander maskless around a local hospital when there were important debates on MP's conduct in the Commons, but there has been a visible lack of any serious political response until very recently. NE Scotland got the army involved earlier in the week (albeit slowly), Durham declared a state of emergency (Thurs?), Northumberland finally making some noises about it today. The only representative to come out with credit that I've heard of (indirectly) is a local independent councillor who seems to have been working hard to help out directly and put pressure on the authorities/local MPs to actually do something useful. Hopefully it might sharpen some minds when they turn to the ballot box.
We had a builder out today to look at some renovation works in our house. His electricity has been off since Friday and NP have told him they might be reconnected by the 8th. He lives fairly close to Newcastle airport so not rural at all.
Hats off to all the NP people working round the clock to get everyone out of this mess and all the people helping those who've been affected.
NPG came round yesterday afternoon and did some work on our substation and woo! We're back on.
Thanks Iain and everyone at NPG.
Not a problem Ben. It’s our what we’re here to do. (And I didn’t do much personally)
Good news - Do we know how many are still off as we head into the next couple of wild days?
Some folks must be working around the clock at the moment....
I think we were at around 3000 yesterday afternoon (from 240,000). The issue is we’re now chasing the smallest faults and each repair is half a dozen here, 20 there, so progress on the numbers is slow.
My guys are now at the command centre (hosted by the fire brigade) liaising with the wider response.
Party time here now too. Everyone in the immediate vicinity back on since lunchtime today which is a relief. The map is looking a lot better than 48hrs ago now and fingers crossed the majority left will get supply sorted or generators to them soon.
I did laugh when a couple of the guys brought in from the deep south admitted that the whole experience of working on the hills with snow every day was something of a culture shock. One of them said he'd never seen snow like it. 😀 Fair play to them though, it has been pretty nasty at times and they were still battling on with good humour.
Silly question - when poles / pylons are down like the photo above, do you put up temporary poles or what? Is most of the network a net so you can lose single lines or is it common for communities to be at the end of a single line of poles?
Looks like a really hard problem getting things back on, well done to all involved.
Not a silly question @Murray - but a complex answer that’s a bit yes, a bit no, and a bit depends.
There’s a suite of standards and guidance built up over the last 100 years to try and address your query, and a few more pages will be written on the back of this event.
P2/7 (the 7th version of P2) gives guidance on how many lines can be knocked out / out for maintenance before people go off and how long you have to get them back and governs the basic network design. That standard suffices pretty well 99.9% of the time. Last week the event was so far outside what the network is designed for as to be laughable.
But according to the lady from the Met Office on PM the last storm like this was 1984 (not the smaller one that hit the south east - that was 1987 I believe) and before that the great storm in 1953.
Building a network that stands up to an event that happens once every 35 years is expensive. Or at least it has been. I’m working on some things that might make it more cost effective in future.
Thanks IGM, I slept through the 1987 storm in Basingstoke, just surprised about the lack of traffic when I woke up. It did bring down an ancient yew at my dad's surgery in Maidstone and the whole wood next to where he lived at Detling but I can't remember much infrastructure disruption. I guess it's easier in densely populated areas with lots of possible paths.
And as you say, storms in the north and near coasts tend to be stronger.
Densely populated areas tend to use underground cable not overhead lines too.
More expensive but better suited to an urban environment.
not the smaller one that hit the south east – that was 1987 I believe
the real damage in the 87 storm wasn’t that widespread. It was down to something called a sting jet.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/wind/sting-jet
The sting jet does undoubtedly add to the damage but it's embedded within the wider storm system. 87J storm was still quite a large storm system and continued to cause damage in Europe after it left us. These systems can be hundreds of miles wide.
Sting jets do not guarantee massive damage either. Storm/Tempête Alex in France last year is an example of this. Very high localised windspeeds were observed but the wider storm wasn't a big one... But if you're caught in it and your home is damaged it's a disaster for you as an individual/family
That’s was my point, the damage was pretty localised and severe. We had no power for ~10 days but it was October and pretty mild from what I remember. I remember barbecuing in the what remained of the garage.
87 storm wasn't localised. There was significant damage from Southampton to Essex, 15 milion felled trees, Sevenoaks famously became 1 oak, etc. In total it caused billions in damage across Europe.
In 1990 there was a bigger Strom named Daria. 90 and 99 were terrible winter storm seasons and thankfully since then there hasn't been a very large storm in the European context. Storm Ciara/Sabine in Feb 2020 caused €2 billion in damage across Europe but was not considered a large storm when compared to the 90s events
87 storm wasn’t localised. There was significant damage from Southampton to Essex,
sounds pretty localised to me
Yup NPG teams are doing an amazing job the huge area they’ve had to cover and very remote locations, wouldn’t make it easy.
@tjagain - add Northern France and Benelux to that to get a better view of the distribution of damage. There aren't any houses in the sea
Most people on here only care about the UK.
elshalimo - a throwaway comment because if it happens in the south its a big issue in the news. If it happens in the north its a small piece at the end of the news.
It's only a matter of time until a big one hits the SE again and when it does we'll never hear the end of it
To be fair the population of little ol' Berkshire where I used to live (25% the size of Northumberland) is greater than N'land and Durham combined. And thats just 1 small southern county so its not surprising if it attracts a lot more attention. No matter how big the storm in the N/NE of England it's rarely going to impact a lot by number of people affected (relatively speaking). Thats what I (and Im sure a lot of others in this area) like about it - the space and lack of people, but it comes with its drawbacks and if they want to live in this kind of area people should probably be thinking about being a bit more self-sufficient? Not like a generator is a massive investment or difficult to source.
I've just driven down to Berwick this afternoon. There are still squads of men dealing with downed trees alongside the trunk road.
What a lovely smell of pine everywhere though 🙂