Yorkshire sends support to those in South West and Wales impacted by Storm Darragh

This week Northern Powergrid sent a support team of 12 customer service ambassadors, two specialist customer support vehicles and 20 generators from Yorkshire, with driving teams to support National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) with its response to help communities in the South West and Wales who continued to feel the impact of the devastation caused by Storm Darragh.

The teams from West and South Yorkshire were sent to help as soon as they could on Tuesday, following a busy weekend working hard and battling the storm to get the power safely back on for Northern Powergrid’s customers.

Once the teams landed they were fully briefed by their colleagues at NGED, and headed into communities to help customers who were still without power due to the storm force winds and heavy rain which caused disruption and damage to their regional electricity network.

Our teams have been working this week in Taunton and Carmarthenshire providing hot drinks, updates on progress, winter warmer packs and welfare facilities so customers can get updates and charge their mobile phones on Northern Powergrid’s specialist customer support vehicles. 

Northern Powergrid also provided 20 generators, with two drivers from its Logistic team, to support NGED’s operational response and help get customers’ power back on as soon as possible whilst their teams worked to repair the damage caused by the storm.

The support is part of NEWSAC - a vital UK energy industry mutual aid agreement. The agreement, which all UK electricity distribution companies have signed up to, provides additional strength to teams so power can be restored as soon as possible, and customers can be supported when networks are damaged by severe weather.

Louise Lowes, Northern Powergrid’s Director of Customer Service, said: “Storm Darragh impacted our network and customers more severely than we expected, but not at the scale that our industry colleagues in the South West and Wales have seen.

“On Tuesday, we successfully got the power back on to our few remaining customers affected by the storm, then we immediately turned our attention to how we could help those customers still impacted elsewhere in the UK.

“We’re incredibly proud of our dedicated teams who have been out there supporting our colleagues in other parts of the UK and helping customers, particularly those who may be more vulnerable, and those communities that were hit hardest by Storm Darragh.”