'Absolute joke' - Residents frustrated over series of unplanned power outages in Singleton, Golden Bay, Secret Harbour

Friday, 30 June 2023 10:49

By Monique Welhan

PIC: File

A series of unplanned power outages in Singleton, Golden Bay and Secret Harbour have residents up in arms.

Some locals have reported five unplanned outages within the past month.

Many have expressed their frustration on social media saying the outages are like "living in a third world country".

A Western Power spokesperson has apologised for the inconvenience and said they are working on improving power reliability in the affected suburbs.

The spokesperson said the outages stem from a high-voltage cable failure at the Meadow Springs substation on May 22.

"This highly specialised cable requires replacement, and we’ve sourced a replacement from New Zealand," the Western Power spokesperson said.

"In the interim, we’ve reconfigured the local network to provide additional capacity from surrounding substations to ensure power supply is maintained."

Western Power claim further outages were due to recent low temperatures resulting in a new record for winter peak demand.

"While the network has been designed to support this record demand, we’ve been operating the local area network in a non-standard configuration due to the cable fault, which has resulted in equipment failures attributed to the high demand," the spokesperson said.

"This was the cause of the outage experienced at 7.30pm on Wednesday night in the area, which impacted 5584 customers.

"About 3400 homes and businesses had their power restored by 9.00pm, with the remaining 2016 in Singleton, Karnup, Golden Bay and Lakelands 
restored by 10.20pm."

Western Power have since completed further network modifications and used thermal imaging equipment to find any more potential issues.

"The specialised cable replacement at the Meadow Springs substation work will be undertaken as soon as possible with the aim of restoring the local network to standard configuration next week," the spokesperson said.

Several residents are calling for compensation but because the recent outages were not longer than 12 consecutive hours they are not eligible.

Customers can stay up to date on outages by visiting  www.westernpower.com.au/faults-outage

 

 

 

 

 

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