A Scottish energy company has apologised to residents of two north-east villages after a series of recent power cuts.
The Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) last night apologised to locals for any inconvenience the outages had caused.
Concerns were raised last week after several power cuts in Boddam and Cruden Bay.
Former councillor Sam Coull, who is a resident in Boddam, spoke out about the power cuts after his lights went out regularly in recent weeks.
He said: “I called SSEN following the last blackout to find out what was happening as there were no gales, no snow and it was a fine autumn evening.
“I was told it was a lightning strike, but there were no storms that I could see.”
He said he had heard rumours that the problems were caused by transformers burning out.
>> Keep up to date with the latest news with The P&J newsletter
He added: “If there is such an issue and they are just waiting for them to burn out, rather than replace them, that is simply not good enough with the worst of the winter weeks approaching.”
The Scottish energy company last night explained the outages were nothing to do with transformers.
Recent faults reported in the area include a pole fire at 3.29pm on Thursday afternoon due to a weather-damaged broken insulator causing a small fire meaning power was isolated to 137 properties in Hatton, Longhaven and Boddam.
All customers had full power restored at 7pm, with half restored by 5pm.
Most of the other blackouts were caused by weather with one being the consequence of someone causing damage after reversing into a pole.
A spokeswoman from SSEN said: “We’d like to apologise to our customers in the area for any inconvenience caused by last week’s interruption to supplies.
“We can confirm that the fault was as a result of weather related damage to our overhead network.
“We’d urge any customers who notice damage to the electricity network to call us on 105, or report via our Power Track app, and our engineers will investigate as soon as possible.”