Last Saturday morning, UK Power Networks found an underground power fault in Winston Road which was impacting 11 properties in Marlborough Road.

UK Power Networks' engineers were quickly on site with a large-scale generator, restoring power by 2pm to the LBP businesses impacted. 

The generator has been effectively providing the needed power since, with the exception of a few minutes of power loss at 7:15am on Wednesday. LBP has liaised with UK Power Networks to find this power loss was caused by them switching from the large-scale generator to the slimline generator which is now in operation. 

The original generator was blocking access for the works and therefore UK Power Networks needed the slimline version installed to enable the require access. 

For sometime, Marlborough Road has been suffering from intermittent power cuts which are very disruptive and often costly to servers, equipment and productivity. LBP has been working with UK Power Networks to encourage a full upgrade of the Winston Road Substation to try to prevent future issue, but this requires extensive investment from UK Power Networks.

We have good news to share!

The extensive investment has been confirmed and the full upgrade works are now underway.

Excavation was completed on Wednesday, and they are currently prepping for the for new electrical pillars to be installed next week. This means the end of the very dated equipment onsite, along with unpicking of the underground electrical diversion, that was put in place to resolve previous capacity issues. Once installed, the new pillars will stablise the electrical feed for Marlborough Road going forward.

To enable these transformational works, UK Power Networks will need to take the 11 properties off generator power to fully shutdown two electrical feeds in Marlborough Road and enable safe transfer onto the new pillars. This will unfortunately mean up to a 3-hour power cut at some stage next week to enable these works.

LBP is working with UK Power Networks to schedule this power cut as effectively as possible and hopes to know more by end of play today.  LBP will update the businesses impacted as soon as we know more.

As with the LBP Road Improvement Works, a little pain for a lot of gain and please rest assured that LBP is working to help minimise that pain.