Power down 18 hours after weekend storm

Swathes of Shetland and more than 1,000 properties suffered power cuts over the weekend due to a thunder storm lasting several hours on Friday night to Saturday morning.

Some customers were left without electricity for about 18 hours.

The worst hit areas were in the central and north eastern parts of Mainland, as well some of the islands.

A spokeswoman for Scottish and Southern Energy said there were a number of direct lightning hits to the network which affected Brae, Mossbank, Tingwall, Gott, Weisdale and Girlsta, as well as Whalsay and Skerries. Areas worst affected lost power for around 18 hours, although they would have had power restored for periods during that time as engineers thought the damage was repaired.

The spokeswoman said: “There was a significant amount of lightning, when it passes over it looks for the closest place to get to earth, and our network is the highest structure it comes into contact with.”

Engineers were out most of the weekend, she said, and had to replace several transformers and detect hair-line cracks on the insulators.

Besides the worst-hit areas, other parts of Shetland had momentary power cuts of a few mintues.