Power outages and storms: A surprisingly good DNO experience

Electricity, Tariffs, Monitoring & Providers

Last Post by Majordennisbloodnok 8 hours ago

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Mars

(@editor)

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Joined: 5 years ago

Posts: 3893

Topic starter 09/01/2026 9:55 pm

We’ve lived rurally for just over seven years now, and in that time power outages have been part of the deal. We’ve had several over the years, two of them directly caused by storms, and up until now the experience has been fairly consistent: the power goes off, the DNO fixes it when they can and eventually things come back on. No drama, no hand-holding, just “we’ll sort it” after we've registered the outage.

Last night was different.

Storm Goretti knocked our power out at around 22:30. We woke up this morning to no electricity, but also to a steady stream of text message updates from Scottish Power, our DNO. This is our third outage due to storm damage, and historically we’ve never had much direct support beyond restoration updates, so this already felt like a shift.

I don’t know what’s changed internally, but Scottish Power seem to have gone from “meh” to ridiculously good at customer support, almost overnight. Alongside the regular outage updates, we received a text saying they’d hired a food truck and stationed it in a village about three miles away, offering hot breakfast and lunch for affected customers. My wife and I both thought that was genuinely thoughtful, even if we were quite happy at home in front of the fire.

Then another text came through. If we didn’t want to use the food truck, we could buy breakfast and lunch ourselves and they’d reimburse £20 per meal, £10 per person. Again, very decent, though we were still fine staying put.

Later in the afternoon, another message landed saying that if the house was too cold, Scottish Power would reimburse up to £200 for a hotel or B&B for the night. At that point it started to feel almost surreal. Not long after that, my wife received a phone call just to check we were OK. No scripts, no rushing her off the phone, just a genuine check-in.

During the call they asked whether we’d been to the food truck or out for food. We explained that we were staying at home because our lane was still snowed in, but that we were fine. The call handler then asked where we normally shopped, which seemed like an odd question at the time. We said mostly Tesco. About five minutes later, £60 worth of Tesco vouchers landed on my wife’s phone.

Honestly, I don’t know what’s happened. We seem to have gone from “we’ll restore your supply when we can” to something bordering on VIP treatment. I’m not complaining... just genuinely surprised.

The final text summed it up neatly an hour after our power was restored: “Your power cut was caused by a fuse failure on overhead equipment. We’ve now completed all necessary repairs, and your electricity supply should be fully restored. We don’t expect any further disruptions. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Quite frankly, we’ve been blown away by how Scottish Power have handled this outage compared to previous ones.

And now I’m really curious whether anyone else affected by Storm Goretti has experienced similar levels of support this time around from their DNOs or whether this was a one-off.

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Sheriff Fatman

(@sheriff-fatman)

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Joined: 9 months ago

Posts: 169

09/01/2026 10:16 pm

Great to read a good service story.

I know that there are priority lists held for households with vulnerable customers in them. Perhaps your household is on a separate list with Scottish Power headed 'internet influencer' that puts you in the VIP lane? 😉

130m2 4 bed detached house in West Yorkshire
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Majordennisbloodnok

(@majordennisbloodnok)

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09/01/2026 10:51 pm

Well done to Scottish Power for doing a good job. Well done, too, to @editor for taking the time to recognise it. Not everyone does well fixing something that’s broken and not everyone acknowledges it when they do.

105 m2 bungalow in South East England
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"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"

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