Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) ensures its engineers are equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of challenges in our changing climate.
The increasing risk of flooding is one of those challenges, so the distribution operator has invested in flood barriers, pumps and training to help protect its critical infrastructure and its customers' power supplies.
Throughout the autumn, teams of engineers from central southern England have taken part in barrier deployment training sessions with the assistance of Geodesign Barriers Ltd. Working together, they have developed active plans to provide effective flood protection for the power company's critical infrastructure in the south.
SSEN's Head Of Works Delivery South, Chris Slingsby said: "Every three years we operate a rolling programme of training that ensures every one of our engineers has the knowledge and confidence to work in many different situations and weather events.
"It's part of SSEN's ongoing commitment to customers and colleagues that we maintain the highest level of skill to look after the electricity network for our 3.1 million customers living and working in central southern England. That means regularly adapting our training to accommodate changing circumstances, such as adverse weather."
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In 2014, SSEN invested in 1.2km of temporary flood barrier and special flood pumps. These strong and well-proven barrier systems are flat-packed and can be easily erected wherever needed in a flooding situation. They can also be deployed site specifically, so they provide protection for contained areas, such as substations; giving flood protection for dam heights from 0.45m to 1.25m and enabling the network to continue supplying power without damage from water ingress that could result in power cuts to customers.
SSEN carries out ongoing training across a variety of situations, systems and safety procedures to ensure its engineers are prepared to deal with power cuts that require repair under challenging conditions, such as high winds, extreme heat, flooding and sub-zero temperatures.
Chris continued: "While we do all we can to ensure a robust and reliable network, there is still the potential for interruption to power supplies during severe weather. I'd like to remind our customers of the free, additional assistance SSEN can provide during power cuts and would encourage anyone who might benefit from our Priority Services Register to find out how this service can help them, or any vulnerable family members."
Customers are eligible for SSEN's free Priority Services Register (PSR) if they:
• Are deaf or hard of hearing
• Have a disability
• Live with children under five
• Are blind or partially sighted
• Have a chronic illness
• Use medical equipment/aids reliant on electricity
• Are over 60
• Temporarily need extra support
In addition to ongoing training programmes, SSEN invests over £150 million a year in building resilience for its central southern England network, through upgrading and reinforcing its infrastructure. This includes around £20 million a year on regular tree cutting and maintenance, over £12 million targeted for refurbishing overhead lines and over £2 million to install Automated Devices on parts of the network to enable the faster restoration of customer supplies in the event of a fault.
