Power loss to 3,000 may have been lightning strike

THREE thousand homes in the Huntingdon and St Ives areas were plunged into darkness last evening following damage to a high-voltage overhead power line. Electricity supplier EDF Energy said supplies were restored to a third of the affected customers withi

THREE thousand homes in the Huntingdon and St Ives areas were plunged into darkness last evening following damage to a high-voltage overhead power line.

Electricity supplier EDF Energy said supplies were restored to a third of the affected customers within a few minutes of the fault at 8.39pm on an 11,000 volt line.

A spokesman said: "EDF Energy Networks engineers worked through the night to repair the network. We restored power to 1,083 customers within seven minutes, and to the rest in stages.

"In order for our engineers to work on the network in safety, we had to isolate power to a further 84 customers at 1.30am. Power was restored to the final 85 customers affected, at 3.37am."

The company said the cause of the outage had not yet been established, but there were thunderstorms in the area at the time.