Around 450 north-east properties have been left without electricity after a large-scale power failure.
The outage is currently affecting Banchory and surrounding areas in Aberdeenshire.
Engineers are understood to be tackling the issue but power outages are expected to continue into the afternoon.
A spokesman for energy company SSE confirmed that a third party had damaged an underground cable leading to the failure in the network.
The spokesman said: “We have engineers on the site at the moment and we would like to apologise to our customers.”
UPDATE: #Banchory #Aberdeen – A 3rd party has damaged an underground cable on our network. Aim to restore the majority of supplies by 13:00.
— hydroPD (@hydroPD) May 16, 2016