Utility Week

22 | JULY 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Pan-utility Analysis Learning the lessons fromStorm Arwen The performance of electricity distribution networks during last year's Storm Arwen was discussed in two reports published in June. Adam John explores the headline fi ndings. A er battering Scotland and the north of England with winds of up to 98mph in November last year, Storm Arwen le more than a million customers without power. The pain was prolonged for some and around 40,000 customers faced power cuts for more than three•days. For 4,000 homes the lights did not come back on until more than a week later and business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng labelled the long wait times to restore power "unacceptable". Both Ofgem and the government have recently published their reports into the response of the networks to the storm along with a number of recommendations to improve their performance during future extreme weather events. Alongside the main document, Ofgem's Customer Experiences of Storm Arwen report was also published, which included qualitative research from interviews of people living in rural areas and who were a‡ ected by an extended outage of more than 48 hours, in order to better understand their experiences. While the research sample was small at just 22 consumers, Ofgem said its report pro- vides "valuable insights into the experiences of a‡ ected customers", which the regulator has considered in its review alongside other information obtained from stakeholders and distribution network operators (DNOs). Key concerns highlighted centred on poor communication strategies and dissatisfac- tion with how compensation was handled for some customers. Ofgem said there was "widespread criti- cism" from the survey group of the accu- racy of updates about when power would be restored, with expected restoration times being amended "numerous times" during the course of the outage. This meant people felt less able to plan mitigations, such as moving to alternative accommodation. It was found that relatively few consum- ers received proactive updates from their DNO during the outage, even those on Prior- ity Services Registers (PSRs). Those who tried to call their network operator during the outage reported lengthy waiting times and some were not able to get through to a person. "Even those who did get to speak to an agent generally felt the person they were engaging with was not well-informed on who was a‡ ected by the outage, when their power was expected to be restored or what support was available in the meantime. Some also felt that the representatives they spoke to lacked empathy in the way they responded to their call," Ofgem said. In giving his response to the report Andy Manning, principal economic regulation spe- cialist at Citizens Advice, tells Utility Week that the impact of the storm on telecommu- nications has highlighted the risks to energy customers from the scheduled shutdown of BT's Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) in 2025. Says Manning: "What this shines a light on is some of the risks that might happen when the PSTN lines are turned o‡ , the old traditional BT landlines. "They are getting turned o‡ in 2025, so

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