Engineers from Electricity North West have restored power to more than 22,000 customers in Ashton-under-Lyne following damage to three underground power cables yesterday afternoon.

Engineers worked through the night to repair the damage and connect 13 generators to ensure the final customers were restored this morning.

Although all customers have their power restored, Electricity North West is urging customers to conserve their energy use as they work to repair the damage and get customers back on normal power supplies.

The power cut yesterday afternoon was caused when a company damaged multiple underground power cables in the area.

The damaged cables operate at 33,000 volts serving a wide area, and engineers worked to restore power by switching supplies to other parts of the network.

Electricity North West incident manager, Samantha Loukes said: “Engineers worked through the night to start to repair the damaged cables and connect large generators to restore power to all customers in Ashton-under-Lyne.

“All customers have their power back, but it’s through generation and back feed and not normal supply, so we’re urging people to only use energy if it’s essential to help prevent any further power outages as we carry out the extensive repair work. Simple things like not using your washing machine or dishwasher for a while would make a huge difference.

“More than 30 engineers have worked on site and we’ll be keeping a close eye on the local network today. Those customers connected to a generator may experience a very short interruption to their power as we reconnect them back to normal supply.

“I would really like to thank our engineers for their hard work and also our customers for their support and patience as we worked hard to restore their power.”

Electricity North West proactively contacted hundreds of customers on its Priority Service Register who may need additional support and sent food vans to the area and served 300 hot meals and drinks to customers without power.

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