Fantastic effort as WPD connects 400,000 customers following storms

Everyone’s power restored within the timescales set by Ofgem

A fantastic effort by WPD staff has seen power supplies reconnected to around 400,000 customers affected by the two major storms of the last week.

And in doing so, all customers were restored within the Guaranteed Standard times specified by Ofgem, the industry regulator.

Last Wednesday’s storms saw 250,000 homes and businesses across the South West, South Wales and the Midlands battered by the high winds which caused power lines to be damaged or brought down by trees, branches and other wind borne debris.

Engineers worked tirelessly in extremely challenging conditions with winds gusting at 100 mph and with restricted access to roads and bridges due to fallen trees and flooding.

On Friday and over the weekend, a further 150,000 customers were affected as a second major storm hit the UK. Again, all customers were reconnected within the times set by Ofgem.

In anticipation of the forecasted weather, WPD depots remained open 24 hours and additional operational and contact centre staff were made available to deal with electricity network issues. Thousands of calls were also received from customers and we were able to respond to each one within an average of three seconds.

We also continued to text tens of thousands of customers whose supplies had been affected, and proactively contacted many more who were known to be vulnerable.

In our worst affected areas we were around 20 times as busy as a normal working day, while over the last week three of our four licences – South West, South Wales and West Midlands – experienced their busiest 24 hour period for faults since ourrecords began.

Some pictures from the last week