WESTERN Power Distribution (WPD) said they “expect to restore customers by Monday night (February 21)”.

With a message published on its website, WPD said they “restored 98 per cent of the customers affected by Storm Eunice and hundreds of field staff are working hard to restore the remaining 14,699 in our South West region who were directly affected by the storm”.

The full message read: “Despite now facing another storm – named by the Met Office as Storm Franklin - our engineers are still working hard to restore electricity to customers who lost power in Storm Eunice.

“Conditions in parts of our region are dreadful, with high winds and heavy rain, but our teams are battling on.

“We have now restored 98 per cent of the customers affected by Storm Eunice and hundreds of field staff are working hard to restore the remaining 14,699 in our South West region who were directly affected by the storm.

“We know these customers are dealing with extremely difficult situations without power and we are working hard to fix every incident and keep people informed.

“We expect to restore customers by Monday night, but we are doing all we can to get the lights on earlier for many customers wherever possible, depending on the specific repair needs at each remaining location.

“As we have done since Friday, we will again be working throughout the night to make further restorations.”

Operations director Graham Halladay said: “This has been the worst storm we have ever experienced in our South West region and I am grateful for the incredible resilience our customers are showing.

"We are doing our utmost to get the network fixed as soon as possible. We have had hundreds of faults, many of them affecting a small number of customers.

“As well as our teams out in the field and in our Control Rooms and Contact Centres, we also have teams working behind the scenes to get equipment to the right places and organising welfare support for our most vulnerable customers.

“They too have been working long hours because no one at Western Power Distribution likes the thought of our customers being left without power.

“Unfortunately, the sheer devastation Storm Eunice left has made accessing and repairing faults extremely challenging, which is why it is taking longer than we would like to carry out repairs. We are sorry and we are doing our level best to get every single customer’s lights back on.”

The company’s website has received 1.8 million hits – that’s two months’ activity in two days.

On a normal weekend, they expect around 21,500 hits and even Storm Arwen only saw 537,000 hits.

“Of course, during the Great Storm of 1987 there wasn’t a website,” the company also said.

For live power cut information visit: powercuts.westernpower.co.uk

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