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Dale’s response to Storm Arwen

Dale’s response to Storm Arwen

Case Study

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When Storm Arwen struck the UK in November 2021, it caused widespread devastation across much of the country, with winds reaching 100mph, causing power cuts to over 200,000 people and facilities from the North of Scotland to Central England.  These power cuts lasted up to 12 days for some unfortunate people.  Much of the Northeast of England was badly affected and mains power was unavailable in many areas.

A hospital in County Durham which specialises in provision of services for the elderly, including palliative and end of life care facilities, lost mains supply as a result of the storm and was forced to rely on its emergency backup generator for power, one of thousands of generators being maintained by Dale. This generator worked as soon as required and kept the essential facility operational throughout the mains power outage, which continued for longer than anticipated.  However, over the weekend the hospital became concerned that their generator was running low on fuel. They called the 24/7 emergency call out team at Dale for help.

Support – 24/7/365

Dale supports over 5000 critical power assets, located across the length and breadth of the UK.  Essential servicing and preventative maintenance programmes make sure that customers have robust backup power systems in place, ready to take the load when required; round the clock support from one of the largest teams of field engineers in the sector ensures essential services including hospitals, fire stations, police services, utility companies and transport services have expertise, on-hand  24/7, 365.

Dale’s Solution

Details were taken by the Dale’s helpdesk and the nearest on-call engineer contacted the customer who confirmed that their fuel tank was only 25% full. Fuel was therefore urgently required onsite to ensure the backup generator could continue to support the hospital until mains power was returned.

Most of the area was experiencing a power outage and fuel was in short supply, so to avoid any delays the engineer obtained 40L fuel on his way to site and then returned several times over the weekend with more fuel, to ensure that the generator was able to power the hospital over the weekend, until the mains was reinstalled.

Our Results

The engineer’s dedication to providing first class customer care ensured that the staff, medics, and patients at the hospital , continued to have seamless power until their fuel tank could be completely refuelled and mains power was returned to the site.

Laura Minghella Smith, Generator Operations Manager at Dale explains that this level of extra care and attention from Dale’s engineers is not unusual. “Our field teams witness first-hand the problems that customers face in difficult and unexpected situations. They go the extra mile, and we support them; our customers can rest assured that they will receive the assistance they need, no matter what the circumstances. ”

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