More than 100 homes left in the dark following Boxing Day power cut in area of Dudley

Residents in the DY3 area were left in the dark for several hours following a power cut at around 11pm, with hundreds of Upper Gornal residents experiencing difficulties.

On Facebook, Karl Browne, a resident of the area, said: "If anyone in Upper Gornal is experiencing a power cut, according to National Grid, they expect the power to be on at around 8.30am.

"If you have older, or vulnerable people in your street, it would be a good idea to check on them, as the power has been off since 11pm last night."

National Grid announced on their website that the reason for the outage is "a fault in their underground network", also saying they are working hard to resolve the issue.

On their website, National Grid wrote: "Reason for outage: There is currently a fault on our underground network, we are working hard to resolve the issue.

"Estimated restoration time: 8.30am Wednesday, 27th December, 2023."

Residents have expressed their frustration following the power cut.

Saleema Singh, a resident of the area, said: "It was a bit annoying in all honesty, we usually have a party on Boxing Day night and it was cut short when the lights went out. We lit a few candles and everyone went home.

"It's the worst possible timing. The workers got here as soon as they could. I think as soon as it was reported they sent someone out. It's not ideal but what can you do?

"We heard that some of the houses got their power back by 12, but we didn't get ours back until much later in the night."

Emergency works on the line took place overnight, with workers restoring power to a number of homes by 12.30am.

Jakob Powell, 54, another resident of the area, said: "It annoyed us a little bit. We watched films at night time and that was cut short, we didn't really know what was going on until it was announced on social media.

"National Grid said that they were coming out pretty fast so that was good at least."

Jakob went on to say that a silver lining of the outage was that his family decided to play board games instead of watching films, giving them another Boxing Day tradition.

Jakob continued: "It was actually quite good when we all calmed down, we had some candles and lights so we lit those and played some board games to keep the kids occupied, they actually loved it.

"As annoying as it was I think it has definitely started a new tradition in the house."

Full power was restored to all 137 affected properties at around 11.44am this morning, with National Grid apologising for any inconvenience caused.

The group announced on their website: "The incident was raised at 10:58pm Tue 26 Dec 23 affecting 137 properties. We successfully restored all supplies in the area by 11:55am this morning.

"We are sorry for any inconvenience that was caused by the power cut."