Our engineers went the extra mile to ensure Bangor Hospital stayed connected during the coronavirus outbreak after a fault was detected in the electricity network.
We have been reviewing network resilience and supply quality to ensure hospitals across the country have the most reliable power supply possible. Our team identified an issue at a local high voltage substation that could have led to a power cut for customers and the nearby Bangor Hospital.
Ordinarily, a backup network would have been relied upon and repair work would have been carried out later in the summer when the network is quieter and work can be completed with less risk. However, given the coronavirus outbreak, we deployed extra engineers to repair the fault and ensure vital electricity supplies were maintained during the work.
Andrew Churchman, our District General Manager for North Wales, said: “We identified an issue on our network that required essential repair work. As the site provides electricity for the hospital, we had to ensure no customers were affected by the repair and maintenance works. Our team worked hard to reduce risk and ensure power was maintained throughout the work to fix the fault.
“We also ensured the hospital had a back-up generator in place before our team, which included more engineers than normal, gave a monumental effort to ensure the problem was sorted very quickly with no disruption in the power supply to the hospital or any other customers.
“If you see our teams working in your communities, rest assured they are working on critical activities to keep the power flowing to homes, hospitals and other vital services at this time.”
The effort from the our team in North Wales is being replicated across the country as we ensure our 3.5 million customers maintain their electricity supply throughout the coronavirus crisis.
As well as hospitals, we have implemented plans being implemented to introduce special measures to protect supply for critical national infrastructure and public service sites such as nursing homes, food supply chain businesses, Ministry of Defence sites and prisons.
As a critical operational business, we have already established social distancing measures and rolled out additional processes for key frontline operational staff and control centre teams who cannot undertake their key roles from home to ensure they can maintain operations in the event of a localised outbreak of coronavirus.
Customers who have received a letter from the NHS advising them that they are ‘at risk’ and should take additional measures to protect themselves from COVID-19 are being advised to sign up for the Priority Services Register. This provides free additional services to customers in vulnerable circumstances if there is an unexpected power cut. They should sign up at spenergynetworks.co.uk or text PSR to 61999.
In the event of a power cut, customers should call the national 105 hotline no matter who they pay their bill to.
For more information about how SP Energy Networks is working to keep the power flowing during Covid-19, please visit the website via the link below.