Power cuts in rural Scotland

Well 50x the amount of people live in Cambridge as on the Isle of Mull.

It's a remote area. problems with the services go pretty much with the territory.

Yes it does impact people locally, but they develop ways to deal with it. Self reliance can be bought for a price, and that price is normally cheaper than installing back up contingency for small numbers of people.

Scottish Island resident here! The west coast is the wettest, windiest place in the UK statistically so many people do have a Rayburn or Aga plus a very healthy larder. Unfortunately I don’t I’m all electric I do however keep a portable gas fire in my garage so at least we can keep one room warm if the worst happens plus we have a camping stove. It can be so localised too as Amy didn’t knock out our power but a couple of other villages did lose it, local halls if on can be great at making huge pots of soup and keeping a warm room. Community spirit can really come to the fore, luckily the last time I was off 3 days was 2013 but for those wondering why you can’t just ‘pack up and go’ high winds usually mean ferry cancellations and when they do run again it’s a battle to get your car booked on with the backlog created.
Island life can be amazing but not for the faint hearted!

I'd say remote island communities get a fair deal with electricity, in that the price they pay for it bears no relation to the actual cost of supplying it.

Not in any way a remote island community, but the electricity supply to the village we live in used to be notoriously fragile. Every time high winds were forecast I had to make sure our extensive collection of oil lamps were topped up. We later got a back-up generator and cook on LPG anyway so the impact was minimal, apart from the noise and cost of the fuel.

The supply has been upgraded so, although we get fairly frequent power cuts, we had one last week, they don’t last very long. Some only seconds.

We had a power cut lasting 4 days last winter. We're in Scotland but not rural or island so it can happen. We claimed back for food and accommodation from the energy company and received several hundred pounds. I'm not sure if you'd be able to since it's not your home address but worth a try? For us it was mid winter and below zero so we couldn't stay in the house with no way to keep warm.

This is why it's important to keep open fires or wood burners, especially if you're in a more remote area which is more susceptible to extreme weather. It's a source of light, heat, hot water and cooking which doesn't rely on the grid.

I would never have a house without one for this reason!