As the people of Victoria continue to wait for their power to be restored, an independent panel of experts is set to review the response by energy companies to the destructive storms that left over half a million homes without electricity last week. The panel will investigate how each energy company managed the incident, worked to restore supply, and communicated with customers during the outage. The inquiry will also examine whether there were enough crews deployed during the outage and whether there were any material opportunities that could have enabled a more rapid reconnection of customers.
The state’s energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, announced the inquiry in question time, citing concerns about the lack of communication from the energy companies. “We’ve heard from communities about lack of communications, late communications, inadequate communications, website crashing, when text messages were sent having missing links – all of these practical immediate supports that communities went without,” she said. “We’re going to get to the answers. We’re going to deliver. We’re going to get the recommendations and we’re going to act on those.”
Although the independent panel is expected to provide answers to the questions surrounding the storm response, fears of a repeat performance are still lingering. More than 3,100 customers remain without power a week after the storms, which brought down 12,000km of power lines across the state and flattened a transmission line in Anakie near Geelong. The overwhelming majority of these customers are located in Victoria’s east, with the hardest-hit areas being those at the end of the line of power supply.
Victoria’s Storm Response Under ScrutinyEnergy Safe Victoria, the state’s energy regulator, has already begun investigating the collapse of the six towers that caused Loy Yang A power station to trip and left an additional 90,000 homes without power. The Australian Energy Market Operator is also investigating the system response and security. The independent panel will complement this work by reviewing the response of the energy companies and providing recommendations for improvement.
The opposition leader, John Pesutto, has announced plans to move a motion in the upper house this week to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the storms, as well as the reliability and stability of the state’s energy distribution networks. He claims that the Victorian government’s inquiry will not be fair dinkum.
Despite the challenges facing the energy companies, authorities are working to restore power to those affected. Emergency services minister, Jaclyn Symes, said that authorities are still assessing the exact number of uninhabitable homes, with Mirboo North in the Gippsland region being the epicentre of storm damage. Symes warned that more wild weather is forecast for the state, with high temperatures expected in the Mallee and Northern Victoria regions, as well as heavy downpours on Thursday. Authorities will provide more detail on Wednesday, but for now, the people of Victoria are left to wait and wonder when their power will be restored.