Come wind, lightning or snow, we aim to keep your lights on

Weather problems may cause damage to our network and can cause interruptions to your supply. Some of these may be of a short duration, which cause sensitive timers on electronic equipment to flash/reset.

There may be interruptions of a longer duration where there is major damage to our equipment or where public safety is concerned.

From time to time our equipment can also be damaged by third parties, such as contractors, vandals and thieves.

Whatever the cause we will always make every effort to restore your power as quickly as possible.

Please contact us any time of the day or night as we may not be aware that your supply is off.

If your electricity goes off without warning

• Don't leave candles or heaters unattended.
• Don't open freezers and fridges more than absolutely necessary.
• Switch off and unplug sensitive electronic appliances such as personal computers, videos, satellite receivers, answering machines etc.
• Have an analogue corded telephone handy as digital telephones will not work during a supply interruption.
• Leave a light switched on so you know when the power is restored.
• During a prolonged interruption, listen to local radio stations for information.

Short term interruptions to your supply

We know that short interruptions to your supply can be irritating.These occur during severe weather when trees and other wind blown debris comes into contact with our lines.

In order to minimise the interruption time we install equipment to switch off the supply for a few seconds and then automatically restore it. This minimises the amount of damage caused and avoids the prospect of a major failure.

We continue to work to reduce all supply interruptions, and have recentlyintroduced a new programme to trim trees near our lines called Tree Management.

If you have an interruption to your supply, we need to know

We are not always aware that your supply has been interrupted. In these circumstances we may need information from you. This will help us restore your supply more quickly.

Please contact our Customer Contact Centre, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

When you call we will require some standard information such as your name, post code and house number. We will also ask if you know the time that your electricity supply went off and if your neighbours are also affected. As part of our fault diagnosis we may ask you to check your trip switches and to look at the display on your meter.

If we are already aware of an interruption to supply we may put a voice message on the telephone giving information about the interruption. This message will be targeted to a specific geographic area and contain relevant information. In this situation if you have seen anything that may have caused the loss of electricity supply, please let us know immediately, as this information will speed the restoration of the electricity supply.