Perth-based SSEN announces additional £3.5 million in funding to protect households from future storms

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Perth -based SSEN has announced that an additional £3.5 million in funding will aid network and community resilience to protect households from future storms.

The national energy provider added that “key improvements” have already been made to core customer and public communications processes following Storm Arwen in November.In addition to the £4.8m in enhanced compensation already provided, SSEN has ring-fenced £1.8m for local authorities in the most affected regions, adding to the £500,000 boost to its Resilient Communities Fund, to be awarded this summer.Around £1.2m will be allocated for additional network resilience investment, focused on enhanced protection of key circuits and contingency measures to help improve response times in future major storm events.

Further details of the investment will be issued in the coming weeks.It comes after energy regulator Ofgem and the Energy Emergencies Executive Committee (E3C) published reports last week slamming energy companies’ handling of Storm Arwen after hundreds of local homes went without power for several days.The report follows a six-month review and contains a series of recommendations aimed at ensuring the same level of disruption does not happen again.The handling of the storm’s aftermath also led to calls from locals for better resilience planning moving forward after villagers were forced to step in and help out vulnerable neighbours.Ofgem’s report called the length of time people remained without power as “unacceptable” and lamented the “poor” communication received from network operators and the length of time it took for compensation payments to be made.The report also found that while some companies did kick their emergency plans into place before Arwen took