Some power companies "let their customers down badly" over Christmas, the environment secretary has said.
Owen Paterson's comments came as the Energy Networks Association said all of the houses that lost power during the Christmas storms had been reconnected.
At the height of the storms, on Christmas Eve, more than 150,000 properties were cut off, with south-east England worst-hit.
Meanwhile, the Met Office has warned of more gales and heavy rain on Monday.
As well as the South East, tens of thousands of homes in north Wales and Cumbria were without power because of the storms, that also caused huge travel disruption and flooding in the run-up to Christmas.
About 600 homes still had no electricity at the start of Sunday.
The ENA tweeted on Sunday night: "Engineers have this evening reconnected those who lost power due to the severe weather damage."
Mr Paterson told BBC Breakfast power companies should have been aware that the Environment Agency was warning of severe weather.
"Quite clearly some of the power companies let their customers down badly," he said.
"It seems obvious at this stage that they let too many of their staff go away for the Christmas holiday, they didn't have enough people manning the call centres and that wasn't acceptable."
'Typical' winter stormForecasters say the latest storm pushing in from the Atlantic will cross the UK from west to east on Monday.
The Met Office has issued an amber warning for rain in Strathclyde and south-west Scotland and Lothian Borders, telling the public to be prepared for the risk of flooding.
There is also a yellow warning - the lowest of the three - for wind in Wales, north-west and north-east England, Yorkshire and Humber, the East Midlands, south-west England and London and the South East.
There are yellow warnings for rain in Wales, Northern Ireland, south-west England and much of Scotland.
BBC Weather forecaster Laura Gilchrist said although the Met Office had issued warnings, Monday's storm was "typical" for this time of year.
She said the rain was "not expected to cause further flooding in areas affected last week".
The Environment Agency has seven flood warnings in place in England where flooding is expected and 106 flood alerts, where people should be prepared for possible flooding.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has 20 flood warnings in place and nine flood alerts.
The unsettled weather looks set to continue into the new year after the Met Office issued a yellow warning for rain on New Year's Day, affecting southern England and western Scotland.
Mr Paterson said it was important that power companies and local councils had "adequate staff" to cope with any emergencies that might crop up.
He added: "We've made it very clear they have clear responsibilities to their customers and to their electors and we expect them to perform."
At the weekend, one of Britain's biggest power distributors, UK Power Networks, promised to increase compensation payments to customers who had lost power in the Christmas Eve storm.
The firm said it would will increase payments for 48-60 hour outages from £27 to £75 for those affected on Christmas Day.
Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Authority said it was talking to Gatwick Airport to establish whether it could have done more to help passengers who were stranded over Christmas after power problems at its north terminal affected check-ins.
In more bad news for the airport's passengers, a landslip between Dorking and Horsham means there are currently no rail services between Gatwick and London.
A spokesman for Southern Railways told the BBC there would not be any services on the route for "a fair period of time", but was not able to give an estimation of how long that might be.
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