Ruddington Blackout Explained

Ruddington’s electricity supplier has revealed the cause of a power cut which hit around half the homes in our village last night (18th October).

Families enjoying Sunday night television were plunged into darkness at 8.05pm. After carrying out an investigation today, Western Power Distribution (WPD) reports that a fault on one its high voltage underground cables was to blame for a total of 1,974 properties initially being blacked out. For the majority of residents the outage was only for a couple of minutes – although many properties then had a second, short loss of power. However, some homes nearer the faulty cabling, in and around the Brookside Road area, were without electricity for over an hour.

It’s the FOURTH significant power outage in Ruddington so far this year. Previous blackouts include along Wilford Road in February, on Old Station Drive in April (below) and at Elms Park in May. With hundreds more houses now being built in Ruddington it’s bound to raise questions about whether the existing supply infrastructure in our village will be able to withstand all the additional, future demand on the National Grid.

In April this year an electricity sub-station on Old Station Drive caught fire

Meanwhile WPD reports that power was restored to ALL properties “through switching” by 9.18pm on Sunday evening.

{Top candle photo courtesy of resident Pat Dring}

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