Summer outages

When the power goes out on a hot day, every minute feels longer. We get that, and we know what an outage costs you. The food in the fridge, the work that grinds to a halt, the kids who need a fan running. We do not take that lightly, and the people fixing it know it too. 

So here is a straight answer to a fair question: why can outages take longer in summer? 

The short answer is bushfire safety. In the hottest, driest months, the same network that runs quietly all winter needs to be handled with a lot more care. A fault that is a quick fix in July can be a slow, careful job in January, because the cost of getting it wrong is a fire. 

This page explains what changes, why it changes, and the practical things you can do to help us get the lights back on sooner. 

There are some short videos below. Each one covers a piece of the picture: how we decide when it is safe to switch power back on, how we inspect long country powerlines and what you can do to help. 

Western Australian summers are hot, dry, and long. The same conditions that make a backyard barbecue feel like a fire risk make the electricity network one too. A fault that would barely register in winter, a falling branch, a piece of debris on a wire, can spark a fire when the bush is dry and the wind is up. 

So through the bushfire season, we run the network with more care. We make our safety settings more sensitive, we stop the network from automatically trying to switch itself back on, and we inspect more before we restore. The trade-off is that outages can be more frequent and last longer, especially in country areas. That is a deliberate choice, and it is the right one. The alternative is far worse.

Restoring power on a high fire risk day is not just a flick of a switch. We use real-time, localised forecasts and fire risk data to assess conditions on the ground, moment to moment, throughout the day. 

That matters, because conditions change. A morning that is dangerously hot and windy can ease by late afternoon. As the danger drops, we can often get crews moving and power restored that same evening, rather than waiting for the next day. The result is the same level of safety, applied more responsively, with less time off for customers wherever the weather allows.  

Many of our country feeders run for more than 100 kilometres and pass through bush, paddocks and remote terrain. On a high fire risk day, before we can restore power after a fault, we need to inspect the entire line to make sure there is nothing on it that could spark a fire when we switch it back on. 

Where we can drive the line, inspection is quick. Where we cannot, our crews walk. That is slow work in the heat, and when conditions hit certain thresholds, a vehicle movement ban can stop us driving even where the track exists. We use drones and helicopters to reach the ground we cannot, and to speed the job up wherever the weather lets us fly. 

The people walking those lines are often working in 40-degree heat, on country they may have driven hours to reach, looking for a fault that could be anywhere along 100 kilometres of wire. They want the power back on as much as you do. They are doing the careful work that lets that happen safely. 

By the time we have checked the whole line and confirmed it is safe, hours can pass. Not because we are slow. Because we are sure.

What is different about repairs in summer  

It is not just the big jobs that take longer. Even routine repairs need more time and more people in the bushfire season. A blown fuse on a powerline, a quick job in winter for one crew member, can take much longer in summer. We send a second vehicle with water, soak the ground around the pole before any work starts, and stay on site after the power is back on to make sure nothing is smouldering. 

A small job that takes one crew member twenty minutes in winter can take two crews most of an hour in summer. Same fault. Same fix. Different stakes. 

Every one of those extra minutes is a deliberate choice to keep your community safe through the most dangerous time of year. 

If your power goes out, we will keep you in the loop. You can: 

Outages are part of life on a network that crosses bush, coast and country. We cannot stop every fault. What we can do is be honest about why restoration takes what it takes, keep you informed while we work, and earn the patience these jobs sometimes need. Thanks for yours.