by SHAN ROSS
A FAULT at a substation has been identified as the cause of a massive power
cut which left more than 200,000 properties across the north of Scotland
without electricity last week.
Finance Secretary John Swinney told MSPs the blackout had been due to a
faulty electronic relay near Inverness.
He said the relay at Knocknagael, a recently redeveloped substation at
Essich, near Inverness, had “malfunctioned”.
This fault caused circuit breakers to open, shutting off the power but also
preventing “more protracted and significant damage” to the system supplying
the north and north west of Scotland.
The problem was deemed so severe First Minister Alex Salmond chaired a
meeting of the Scottish Government Resilience Committee, which is activated
in the event of widespread or complex emergencies.
Mr Swinney said electricity supplies to most of the affected properties
were restored by Thursday morning, but it had taken longer to return power
to homes in Orkney.
The minister was answering a question from SNP MSP Rob Gibson on the cause
of last week’s power cut.
Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Power Distribution, who initially
thought the outage was caused by a foreign object striking a line, used a
helicopter to inspect 55 miles (88.5km) of power lines between Moray and
Inverness in an effort to identify the problem.
The power cut led to a number of distressed residents calling Fire Scotland
for help, and fire crews were also sent to deal with a number of alarms set
off by the power outage.
Some rail services were disrupted with ScotRail reporting delays of up to
20 minutes due to a power supply problem at Inverness.
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