ScottishPower has completed a £6 million electronic map of the company's electricity network aimed at reducing power cuts caused by accidental damage to underground cables.

This accounts for an unacceptably high average power loss of nearly eight minutes a year for each of the company's 1.8 million customers - that's 10 per cent of all faults.

But ScottishPower is testing the use of the Internet to provide utilities and their contractors with instant access to the new Geographic Information System (GIS) - which will even be possible from an excavation in progress. Contractors will require only a telephone, a modem, a web browser and a password.

The GIS will eventually replace maps and microfiche as the preferred method for issuing information on the location of underground cables. ScottishPower receives around 1,000 such requests a week, mainly from roads authorities and utilities supplying gas and telecoms services.

Teams in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Falkirk spent more than three years transferring details of ScottishPower's network from 100,000 large paper maps to the GIS.

Matching the maps prior to electronic scanning was a task equivalent to assembling a jigsaw the size of 100 football pitches and containing enough information to fill the shelves of six average-sized libraries.

ScottishPower's wires business is also utilising the GIS as a tool to improve the management of its £2 billion worth of assets.

Stan Currie, Project Sponsor and Manager of ScottishPower's Forth Region, said the GIS was an example of the technological innovations the company was making to enhance the quality of electricity supplies.

"The GIS is being developed to provide contractors with instantly available information on the location of cables which should reduce accidental damage and inconvenience and also improve safety", Stan Currie added.

Further Information:
Gordon Laidlaw,               ScottishPower Press Office          0141 248 8200