Recovery work to repair extensive damage to WA’s main electricity network is almost complete, after a mammoth effort to restore customers following multiple concurrent emergency events.
Western Power has restored all 115,000 homes and businesses whose power supply was impacted by the severe weather event experienced across the metro, Midwest and Wheatbelt over the weekend.
The extensive scale of the damage affected the largest number of customers since the 2010 hailstorm event which affected 160,000 customers.
The storm resulted in around 100 hazards with repair required to more than 100 poles and associated conductor lines.
This includes the 23,000 customers in Geraldton and surrounding areas who have been restored following a severe lightning storm in the Midwest on Saturday night.
Western Power Executive Asset Operations Zane Christmas said all available crews from across the network were deployed with contractors called in to help.
“The damage was so widespread we had all available ground crews, network controllers and support and logistics teams working to support, repair and restore,” said Mr Christmas.
“This involved repairing and replacing around 70 poles and 60 conductor bays on the distribution network as well as around 35 transmission poles on five different lines in the transmission network, and these numbers may grow as more assets are assessed,” he said.
“As much of the damage was in the Wheatbelt and Mid-West, we had logistical challenges with distance, terrain and large machinery required for the repairs.
“An important part of repair is patrolling to identify faults and ensure the network is safe to return to service - the network is one of the largest islanded grids in the world - the sheer size of the area that needed to be patrolled was significant and along with vehicles we used drones and helicopters to assist with this.
“We installed large-scale generators and also deployed emergency response generators to communities where repair was going to take longer.”
“The support we received from local communities and contractors was invaluable and we thank them for this and for their understanding while we worked to get their power back on.”
Mr Christmas said more than 90,000 customers were restored within the first 24 hours through the Network Operation Centre using tech smarts to backfeed.
“Crews worked to address the hazards first before repairing, with smaller, more technical, and complex repairs completed over the last few days.”
Mr Christmas said at the same time as storm repair crews were responding to outages in the Midwest and Wheatbelt associated with bushfires in Warradarge, Eneabba, Mogumber and Bindoon.
“We’re currently communicating with the remaining impacted customers via SMS on updates including estimated restoration times and response efforts, as well as working closely with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services to safely access firegrounds where possible and complete final repairs.”
If you see a fallen power line, please stay eight metres away and Make The Safe Call to Western Power on the emergency 24/7 number 13 13 51 so that emergency response crews can attend the hazard to make the area safe. Stay up to date by visiting our outages page.