Qué ocurrió
Storm Boelo, the second named storm in three days, crossed Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England on Saturday night and Sunday. As Ella Kipling reported for BBC News, two men were killed by falling trees, one in north London and one in Dumfries and Galloway, gusts peaked at 85mph at Machrihanish in Argyll and Bute, and the Energy Networks Association said 161,400 properties were without power at 15:00 GMT on Sunday. Across Storm Boelo and Thursday's Storm Austen, it said 838,700 properties had faced power cuts. We covered the warnings, and what a power cut does to your carbon records, in Friday's story on the two storms and the Be Ready campaign. This is what the storm actually did, checked against the network operators' own updates:
- North of Scotland (SSEN): by 7pm on Sunday more than 54,000 customers had been reconnected and around 38,000 were still off. SSEN said most would be back on Monday, but that it would be Tuesday before everyone affected by Storm Boelo was restored, because of the extent of the damage and fallen trees and flooding blocking roads. It is already preparing for a third storm forecast to hit the north of Scotland on Tuesday.
- Northern Ireland (NIE Networks): about 12,500 customers lost supply. By 4:30pm around 11,500 had been reconnected, with under 1,000 still off and the hope that all would be back on Sunday night.
- Weather: the amber wind warning ran until 21:00 on Sunday. The BBC reported 130mm of rain at Cluanie Inn in the Highlands, 17 flood warnings in Scotland and four in England and Wales, and businesses in Largs on the Clyde coast flooded overnight on Saturday. The Scottish Government said conditions may ease but adverse weather could return in the coming days. The Met Office has yellow wind warnings from 03:00 to 23:59 on Tuesday 27 October for most of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cumbria and the north east of England.
Qué supone para su empresa
You may be owed a payment if you were off for a long time. In Great Britain the Electricity (Standards of Performance) Regulations 2015 set guaranteed standards for the network operator that owns the wires to your premises (not your supplier). In severe weather, if your supply is not restored within 24 hours (category 1) or 48 hours (category 2), the operator must pay £80, then £40 for each further 6 hours, up to a cap of £2,000. Since the 2023 amendment the sums in severe weather are the same for business and household customers. The operator decides which category the storm falls into from the number of faults on its network, so you may not know the threshold until it tells you. The clock starts when the operator first learns your supply has gone, so report the cut on 105 rather than assume it knows. The regulations list exemptions, and a payment can lapse if the operator has not received a claim within three months of your supply coming back. Northern Ireland has separate standards through NIE Networks. SSEN also said customers off for more than 12 hours can claim £30 per person per day for food and drink, with receipts, under its own support package.
Report the kWh you actually used. A site shut for two or three days uses less electricity, and that shows in the month's bill. It is not a saving to claim. If the gap is big enough to show in your year-on-year comparison, say in your report's narrative that the site was off supply, with the dates. Our Friday story explains why.
Generator fuel is Scope 1, and over a multi-day cut it adds up. Fuel burned in equipment you own, lease or hire is a direct emission. Record the litres and fuel type for each site from delivery notes or a dipstick reading, and keep the receipts: they are the same records a compensation or insurance claim needs.
Write the event down while it is fresh. Buyers increasingly ask in tenders how you would keep supplying through storms and floods. A short note of what Storm Boelo did to you (sites, hours off supply, what you did, what it cost) is the evidence for that answer. Our climate risk assessment guide shows how to set it out, and checking flood risk for your premises covers the official flood maps.
A worked example: three days on a generator
Take an illustrative small workshop that lost power on Sunday morning and is told to expect reconnection on Tuesday, 72 hours later. It normally uses 150 kWh of electricity a day. To keep working it hires a diesel generator that burns 6 litres an hour for 10 hours a day.
- Over 3 days the generator burns 180 litres. At 2.58354 kg CO2e per litre on the 2026 factor that is 465 kg CO2e, or 0.47 tonnes, reported as Scope 1 for the site.
- The 450 kWh of grid electricity it did not use would have been 59 kg CO2e of Scope 2 at 0.13096 kg CO2e per kWh. The generator's emissions are about 7.9 times the grid's for the same three days, because a small generator turns only part of the diesel's energy into electricity, and the grid is now mostly gas, wind and nuclear.
- On the payment standard, 72 hours off supply in severe weather would come to £400 if the operator classed the storm as category 1, or £240 if category 2, provided no exemption applies and the claim is made in time. The regulations, not this example, decide what any customer is owed.
Qué hacer ahora
- If you are still off, report it on 105 and note the time you called. Ask your operator for its estimated restoration time and which category it has applied to the storm.
- Keep every receipt: generator hire and fuel, food for staff, alternative premises. They support a claim and they give you the litres for your Scope 1 figure.
- Claim within three months of your supply coming back if you were off beyond the threshold. The operator may pay automatically, but the regulations let the payment lapse without a claim.
- Check Tuesday's warnings for each site on the Met Office website, and move vehicles and stock away from trees and flood-prone ground before the wind returns.
- Log the event with dates, sites, hours lost and costs. It is the first entry in your climate risk record, and the evidence for the next tender that asks about severe weather.
