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| FEBRUARY 2023 | UTILITY WEEK
Electricity distribution
High Viz
SSEN battles the big freeze in Shetland
Snow storms caused a misery for hundreds of homes on the Shet-
land Islands in Scotland in December, sparking a military-style
operation by engineers at Scottish and Southern Electricity Net-
works (SSEN) to restore supply.
The network said the snowfall in some areas was the worst
seen in 30 years, with the power to more than 5,000 homes cut
o• . SSEN found over 100 individual points of ice accretion damage
with 25 of those on a single circuit.
More than 200 SSEN sta• , along with contractors and support
sta• , were forced to work in extremely challenging conditions as
they completed the replacement or realignment of over 100 poles
and restrung 133 spans of power line – representing over 10km of
the overhead network.
The … nal 24 homes in Vementry, Grobsness, Brechin and
Watsness were reconnected on 18 December Рsix days aΠer the
storms hit.
Mark Macdonald, head of region at SSEN Distribution, said:
"The scale of ice-loading on our network from [this] storm brought
comparisons of when the 'Big Snaa' hit Shetland in 1995, with
many of our teams and residents saying the scale of damage this
time was even worse. I'm immensely proud of the teams for their
dedication and commitment in overcoming signi… cant engineer-
ing challenges and getting the job done.
"It's clear that the sense of community in Shetland is very spe-
cial, with local groups coming together to provide welfare where it
was needed and help keep people warm and fed."
