SSEN has highlighted their use of helicopters alongside ground teams to ensure their networks are in the best possible condition – such as ensuring that trees and vegetation are far enough away from lines to minimise the risk of them striking equipment in high winds and storms.

By using helicopters, SSEN are able to not only cover wide expanse of the network in a relatively short space of time, but from the air can also get a completely different perspective of the network and how it is sitting in relation to local landscape – which helps to shape the short and medium-term plans for maintenance, upgrades, tree-cutting and engagement with local landowners.

SSEN said: "As part of our ongoing network resilience programme, we plan to invest around £12.5m maintaining and upgrading our infrastructure across the North East this financial year, an increase of nearly £3m on 2021/22.


"A targeted £2m tree-maintenance programme will also be undertaken to ensure ongoing tree clearance from our infrastructure in line with industry standards. Our teams will be inspecting around 2000km of network, and clearing trees and vegetation away from of around 8000 spans of line (approximately 600km) between now and Spring 2023.

"We're really keen to show our customers what we've been doing since winter to boost network resilience, and building on the relationships we've developed with local media over the years is a great way of showcasing this work.

"As many of you reading this will remember only too well, the north east of Scotland was particularly badly hit by the storms of this past winter, and last week we were joined by a team from STV News as we were carrying out a helicopter patrol across approximately 520km of rural Aberdeenshire – a fantastic way of highlighting the hard work our teams have been doing to strengthen local supplies.

"We couldn't have picked a better day for STV to come fly with us – the clear skies and abundance of sunshine provided excellent conditions for the helicopter patrols, with the TV crew seeing first-hand the hard work our teams have been doing in the field, reconstructing and strengthening the sections of our infrastructure that had been impacted by the storms of this winter past. The photo at the top of this page is one they captured during the flight, where you can see a section of our overhead network that was rebuilt during the storms."