Storm Franklin Power Cuts

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There are still numerous faults across South West England caused by Storm Eunice last Friday that haven’t been repaired yet. Now a lot more power cuts have been added to the long lists of UK DNOs thanks to the arrival across the British Isles of yet another named storm yesterday, Storm Franklin. Here’s how the Met Office initially announced the news:


Storm Franklin has been named as the low-pressure system is expected to bring high winds during Sunday night and into Monday morning for much of the UK.

The latest storm follows on from a week in which Storm Dudley and Storm Eunice also impacted the UK, although wind gusts from Storm Franklin are expected to be lower than Eunice which triggered two Red Weather Warnings.

Northern areas of Northern Ireland are covered by an Amber Wind Warning that will be in force from early Monday morning. Within the Amber Warning area, winds could be in excess of 80mph in exposed coastal areas, but more widely between 60 and 70mph. Damage to buildings is possible, and there’s likely travel disruption.


An extended Yellow Warning for wind which covers much of the rest of the UK, except the northeast, has also been issued for Storm Franklin. Within the yellow warning area, wind gusts will be 65-75mph in coastal areas, and more widely 50-60mph further inland. The coasts of the northwest of England and the southwest of Scotland could see gusts of up to 75mph for a short period on Sunday night and early Monday morning.

Here are the by now all too familiar live power cut maps from across the British Isles this morning, starting with the island of Ireland:

Next here’s our today’s map from local DNO in South West England, Western Power Distribution:

Then there’s the rest of the south of England, starting with the southern area of Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks:

followed by UK Power Networks:

[Edit – 23:45 on February 21st]

It’s now nearly midnight on Monday, so let’s take another look at the state of the United Kingdom’s distribution grid. Here’s an overview from earlier this evening:

Zooming in on North Cornwall there are currently still plenty of faults remaining to be repaired:

That includes 4 feeders at our local Davidstow substation, and sadly it looks as though some unfortunate folks just up the road from here are facing a fourth night without any electric power:

P.S. Which has now been confirmed for the last 6 properties:

[Edit – 05:20 on February 22nd]

The latest Davidstow deadline has been missed, but no new “estimated restoration time” has yet been issued:

Here’s the overall picture across South West England in the not so small hours of Tuesday morning:

Watch this space!

8 thoughts on “Storm Franklin Power Cuts”

  1. The Energy Networks Association 4 PM severe weather update reads as follows:

    Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin have disrupted power supplies.
    Around 1.45 million customers have been reconnected
    Around 29,700 customers are without power

    The main areas affected are:

    South West England – approx. 10,000 customers
    South East England – approx. 7,800 customers
    South England – approx. 5,700 customers

    We will update the latest information here first and provide a further update tomorrow (Tuesday) morning

    Reply ↓

  2. In their 5 PM storm update WPD state that:

    After another 24 hours of round the clock repairs, we’re continuing into the night to restore power to the remaining 5,260 customers in the South West whose electricity supplies are still affected by Storm Eunice. We will continue to work flat out to restore these customers tonight.

    This final push follows one of our busiest ever storm periods during which we have restored power to more than half a million customers in two days and handled more than two months’ worth of calls in less than 48 hours. We also experienced two million hits on our website in the same 48 hour period as Storms Dudley and Eunice passed through our region.

    In our East Midlands, West Midlands and South Wales regions, we’re pleased to report that power cuts are now back to normal levels. This means we’ve been able to transfer even more teams from these parts of our network to the worst affected areas, bolstering our already considerable restoration efforts in the South West. We have hundreds of field crews working to get the lights back on for our customers.

    While our focus is first and foremost on restoring supplies, many thousands of our customers may be entitled to compensation due to being without power for a prolonged period following the storm. As soon as supplies have been restored we will begin contacting customers automatically to process compensation as part of the company’s Guaranteed Standards of Performance. To give an example, a customer off supply over 48 hours will be entitled to a payment of £75, plus an additional £70 for every further 12 hour period after this.

    Operations Director Graham Halladay said: “This has been one of the most difficult and challenging weather events we have faced in recent years but our teams have responded with determination and have been working around the clock in some atrocious conditions to reconnect customers in the communities they serve.”

    “We’re extremely sorry that some of our customers are still without power and understand that this is extremely difficult, particularly over long periods and in cold weather. With that in mind, we’re doing our best to provide support in worst affected areas and would like to thank all our customers for their patience, understanding and resilience. Despite being without power we have received hundreds and hundreds of messages of support and appreciation from our customers for our hard working teams. This is very humbling given that our customers are facing such a difficult time and their messages are spurring on our teams who continue to work long hours in gruelling conditions to make the final fixes on the network.”

    “We will not stop until the last customer has been reconnected and are using every available resource to make sure we can make this happen as soon as is humanly possible. Our teams will keep working until the final customer has their lights back on.”

    Reply ↓

  3. In a rather brief update at 12 noon on Tuesday the ENA report that:

    Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin have disrupted power supplies.

    Around 1.48 million customers have been reconnected
    Around 11,400 customers are without power

    Reply ↓

  4. In their 1 PM storm update on Tuesday WPD explain the nature of their recent problems at length:

    After three storms in five days we finally have some calmer weather, which is enabling us to get on with restoring supplies to customers affected by Storms Eunice and Franklin.

    We are determined that the final few hundred customers whose supplies were lost during Storm Eunice will be restored today. Even more teams from the East and West Midlands and South Wales have joined colleagues in the South West to make this happen.

    We also have customers who were affected by Storm Franklin and the calmer weather means we are now confident that they too will have supplies restored by the end of the day. In total we currently have 168 faults from the two storms on the network, impacting 3,423 customers overall.

    Operations Director Graham Halladay said: “The weather is finally being kind to us, which is speeding up our progress. I would like to thank customers for their resilience and patience during what has been the worst period of sustained bad weather any of us can remember.

    “It has been very humbling to receive the thank you cards customers have been sending us. Most of our staff and their families live in the communities we serve so getting the lights back on isn’t just a matter of pride – it’s personal.

    “I would like to echo customers in paying tribute to our staff who have been working long hours, often in terrible conditions. We are sorry that restoring supplies has taken longer than we would like but please be assured we haven’t forgotten anyone. Quite simply, we wouldn’t.”

    The question many customers are asking us is ‘why is it taking so long’. The picture below shows the conditions staff trying to restore supplies after Storm Eunice faced and the damage to one of our vehicles while they worked.

    On Saturday our helicopters flew 330km of network, inspecting more than 3,200 pylons and poles. Conditions were too bad for the helicopters to fly on Sunday but they were able to get airborne on Monday, although crew reported ‘it was like working in a washing machine for the day’. The advantage of our helicopters is that they can inspect remote areas. As you will see from the picture below, there have been incidents where more than one tree has fallen on our overhead lines. The trees have to be cleared before we can even begin to assess what repair is needed, which all takes time.

    Our helicopters are continuing to patrol our network. They are now looking for storm damage that hasn’t affected supplies but will need repairs in the future. We have also sent one helicopter to help SSE inspect its network for damage.

    Reply ↓

  5. In their 5 PM storm update WPD report that:

    Now that we have calmer weather our fantastic engineers are powering on with restoring electricity supplies – in the four hours since our last update we have managed to resolve nearly half the faults that were outstanding from Storms Eunice and Franklin.

    We expect to keep making good progress throughout the evening and we are confident that everyone on our network affected by the two storms will be restored by midnight.

    If your neighbours’ power comes back on and yours doesn’t, we would ask you to re-set your trip switches. If that doesn’t work, then please call us on 105.

    Operations Director Graham Halladay said: “I really want to thank all of our customers for their patience, resilience and understanding. I particularly want to thank everyone who has taken the time to say thank you to our engineers as they have worked their way through the repairs. I know you have helped keep their spirits up, especially when Storm Franklin was making life so difficult for them.

    “Storm Eunice was the worst storm ever to hit our South West network. What we really needed was two days of calm weather so we could fix everything. We didn’t get it and I am sorry it has taken longer to get power back on than it normally would.”

    Although our focus remains on restoring supplies, many thousands of our customers may be entitled to compensation due to being without power for a prolonged period following the storm. As soon as supplies have been restored we will begin contacting customers automatically to process compensation as part of the company’s Guaranteed Standards of Performance. To give an example, a customer off supply over 48 hours will be entitled to a payment of £75, plus an additional £70 for every further 12 hour period after this.

    We will not stop until the last customer has been reconnected and are using every available resource to make sure this happens as soon as is humanly possible. Our teams will keep working until the final customer has their lights back on.

    Reply ↓

  6. In their 9 AM update on Wednesday WPD point out that:

    We have now restored power to all customers whose supplies were affected by Storms Eunice and Franklin.

    If your power has not come back on, please re-set your trip switches. If that doesn’t work, please call us on 105.

    Operations Director Graham Halladay said: “I would like to thank all of our customers for their patience and resilience while we worked to restore their supplies. We know that not having power is difficult and we were doing everything we possibly could to get the lights back on as quickly as possible.

    “I also want to pay tribute to staff both in the field and in our offices who have been working long hours to restore supplies and keep our customers informed. Many of them are tired but they’ve kept going because none of them wanted to see a customer without power for a minute longer than necessary. We’re all grateful to the customers who have taken the time and trouble to say ‘thank you’ – your appreciation has raised our spirits.”

    Our storm work hasn’t stopped yet. Some supplies have been restored through generators or temporary repairs and we will be working to make these permanent. We do not expect this activity to cause any further interruptions. Also, many thousands of our customers may be entitled to compensation due to being without power for a prolonged period following the storm. Now that supplies have been restored we have begun contacting customers automatically to process compensation as part of our Guaranteed Standards of Performance. To give an example, a customer off supply over 48 hours will be entitled to a payment of £75, plus an additional £70 for every further 12 hour period after this.

    As the last week has proved, storms do happen and we would like to take this opportunity to remind customers that if they are vulnerable to the effects of a storm they can sign up to our Priority Services Register.

    Reply ↓

  7. In an even more terse report at noon on Wednesday the ENA inform us that:

    Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin have disrupted power supplies.

    Almost 1.5 million customers have been reconnected

    Less than 1,400 customers are without power

    Reply ↓

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