MORE than 1,600 Sheet residents eventually saw the light last week after being reconnected following 15 hours of power cuts which hit parts of the village near Petersfield last week.

A fault on Monday meant the villagers were without power for more than four-and-a-half hours, from 9am to nearly 1.40pm.

Caused by a high-voltage fault, which activated the safety trip, engineers managed to restore supplies using another section of the network nearly five hours later.

But the following day, at 8.25am, around 60 customers again found their supply disrupted, caused by what was thought to be a similar fault to the previous day.

While power was restored to the majority of properties with the use of a generator, around 20 homes directly fed by the faulty piece of equipment were still without power for up to 10 and-a-half hours later. The remaining householders were finally reconnected by 6pm.

A spokesman for Southern Electric Power Distribution said: "We apologise to the customers affected by the Interruption to the power supply due to a fault with some of our equipment."