AusNet customers in Victoria’s east and central mountain areas should prepare for potential power disruptions due to more damaging weather forecasted for late Sunday and early Monday morning.
Winds are expected to gust up 130 km/h in south east Melbourne suburbs and around 100 km/h in coastal areas and in Gippsland from Sunday afternoon. Winds should ease throughout the state during Monday. Particular locations which may be affected include Seymour, Melbourne, Traralgon and Bairnsdale.
“The current strong wind conditions impacting customers on our electricity network is the longest sustained weather event the network has faced in more than 10 years,” said Andrew Linnie, Executive General Manager, Distribution.
“Since the start of the wild weather last Sunday, the past week has seen around 120,000 customer outages with some customers impacted multiple times. We’ve been well-resourced to address faults and have been keeping customers informed,” said Mr Linnie.
As of 9:30am on Sunday 1 September, 504 customers were without power.
“The primary cause of outages over the past week has been damage to powerlines and poles caused by fallen trees, branches and debris.
“We recognise power outages are challenging for households and businesses, and can assure the community weare doing everything we can to restore power as quickly as possible. We have additional field crews and call centre staff preparing to respond,” he said.
We have generators temporarily stationed in Emerald, Cockatoo and Mirboo North so they are ready to be connected to provide backup power to town centres if the storm impacts the network. They may be relocated to areas of most need as the storm impacts become clearer.
We encourage people to now prepare as best they can for the damaging weather. This can include:
- Charging your mobile phone as well as battery packs so they're ready to power your mobile devices
- Having battery powered torches and radios on hand, with spare batteries
- Having cash on hand in case electronic payment systems go down
- Stocking up on essential food items and bottled water if you have an electric water pump
- Ensuring you can open your garage or fence manually
Further tips can be found on our website https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/outages.
In the event of an outage, ensure you stay away from fallen powerlines and assume any fallen or damaged wires are live.
Faults, emergencies or damaged or fallen powerlines can be reported online at https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/outages/report-a-fault or by calling AusNet on 13 17 99. We will keep our Outage Tracker up to date with restoration times.