Bullsbrook community updates

We know repeated outages have caused real frustration for homes and businesses in Bullsbrook. This page brings together clear, practical information on what’s been happening, what we’re doing right now, and what’s coming next

Latest updates

Power restored following recent outages

Update Monday 3/2/2026

Overnight outages affected more than 2,200 homes and businesses across Bullsbrook and surrounding suburbs. Our crews and network operations teams worked through the evening and night to restore power as safely and quickly as possible. The majority of customers were restored by 10pm, with the remaining customers restored in stages overnight. All customers impacted by outages were restored by 5am.

The Bullsbrook network

The Bullsbrook area has a widely dispersed population and is supplied by the Muchea zone substation primarily via three feeders crossing highly vegetated areas.

Why interruptions can occur

The causes of recent outages have varied, including equipment failures (such as pole top fires, overhead conductors and switchgear), environmental factors (such as birds, animals and vegetation hitting and damaging infrastructure), lightning, and several bushfires in the area.

Some customers can experience longer restoration times due to network configuration and the need to complete safety checks before restoring supply.

This means we have to adjust network protection settings in the summer months to ensure we don’t attempt to restore the network and potentially risk causing a spark resulting in a bushfire if there is vegetation or fauna impacting an asset.

When there is a fault or other interference during this period, the more sensitive settings ensure that power is interrupted faster than usual, and the power will remain off instead of being automatically restored until a foot patrol is completed or it is deemed safe to do so following a bushfire risk assessment.

What we saw in early February

The main outage affecting around 2,000 customers was caused by a large tree branch falling on a nearby power line. Power was restored in stages as crews repaired the damage and network operations teams restored supply where possible.

A separate issue involved an underground cable fault under Great Northern Highway. The underground team confirmed the cable is in conduit and the team worked to locate and replace the high-voltage cable.

Following this event, we’ve reviewed how the network responded and identified changes to reduce the scale and duration of similar outages in future.

Improvement work

We’ve adjusted network settings to help reduce the likelihood of further interruptions.
Our teams are cutting known trees that are encroaching on the network, and we’re organising vegetation inspection to help target works.
We’re investigating known defects and completing incident and protection reviews to reduce outage frequency and duration.
We recently deployed several generators in Bullsbrook to support the local electricity supply while repairs were underway on a damaged cable. These generators helped maintain capacity while load was redirected to another feeder. The cable repair is now complete.

Maintenance and reliability work underway

We’ve undertaken and will continue to deliver targeted maintenance and reliability works across the Bullsbrook area of the network, including pole and insulator replacement, switchgear maintenance, installation of additional protection and reclosers, and detailed incident and protection setting reviews.

Safety

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.

Staying informed

Where to get updates

We’re communicating with customers directly impacted by outages via SMS with information and updates including estimated restoration times, our response efforts and the cause where known.