Petersfield’s homes and businesses were left without electricity for more than an hour.
Stores in the town were unable to serve customers when the power went off, while the Hindhead Tunnel was completely closed.
Petersfield businesses that must keep food at carefully-controlled temperatures were particularly affected.
Major supermarkets including Waitrose used their diesel generators to provide emergency power during the outage and so preserve frozen and chilled food.
Some people reported problems getting data services via mobile phone networks during the power cut.
We hear from restaurant and pub operators in this special report from Harrison RB.
