Upgrades and essential maintenance work is being undertaken on the back-up power supply Western Power has in place for Geraldton and surrounds.
The upgrade work currently underway will be completed in December and aims to enhance network resilience and improve reliability for community and industry in the Mid West region.
Synergy is undertaking essential upgrades on the two generators located at Mungarra Power Station, including preventative maintenance. One generator will be available while the other is undergoing essential upgrades.
The gas turbine generators can be used to provide some power supply to support significant planned or unplanned outages on Western Power’s network, by ‘islanding’ the area from the main network or supplementing the main network. ‘Islanding’ is an approach commonly used to ensure support continued power supply to communities while network infrastructure upgrades and maintenance is undertaken.
It is important to be prepared as the risk remains of a fault occurring on the network which could result in an outage.
There are no associated planned outages during these works, however, in the event of any unforeseen issues or a fault on the main feeder lines causing an outage, local crews in the Geraldton and Three Springs area will respond to minimise the impact on the community. Specialist crews can also be deployed if necessary.
It’s important for people to be prepared should any potential outage affect them – such as making sure medical equipment, computers and phone batteries are charged.
During unplanned outages, we communicate with impacted customers and stakeholders via SMS and if the outage is significant in duration and the numbers of customer impacted, we use additional communications channels such as radio.
As part of our network renewal and maintenance program, we continually identify and replace infrastructure and assets as they age or that have been identified as needing replacing.
Western Power’s priority is to safely meet the energy needs of our customers, and this work ensures the network is as resilient as possible.
If you require further information please contact communityenquiries@westernpower.com.au