Emily McInerney, A Home in the Outback

It was announced at midday Saturday October 19, that power has been restored, via generator, to customers living in rural areas outside of Broken Hill, after Essential Energy completed aerial inspections of the power network and confirmed it was safe to re-energise.

More than 12,000 customers were impacted by unplanned outages following a storm that moved through the area on Wednesday night, bringing down transmission towers and causing damage to the electricity network.

Currently Broken Hill is running on diesel powered generators.

The NSW Government immediately activated an emergency response and coordinated assistance across several emergency services and government agencies, as well as electricity companies, who are responding to this event.

Multiple agencies were involved in transporting supplies including generators, fuel pods, cool rooms, lighting towers and Starlinks (satellite connections) to the area.

NSW Police are also leading the coordination of support by government agencies and will manage the distribution of fuel supplies.

The Rural Fire Service has established community hubs at RFS Brigade Stations in Menindee, Wilcannia and White Cliffs.

While the SES units at Menindee and Wilcannia are open for community members to drop in and charge their devices and are deploying generators to local organisations.

NSW Health is contacting vulnerable patients in areas impacted.

Essential Energy is also contacting registered Life Support customers who remain without power.

NSW Telco Authority has deployed a Cell On Wheels and mobile radio assets to Menindee. NSW Department of Education has mobilised an Emergency Response Unit that is coordinating the delivery of generators from Sydney to schools in the Far West, with a priority for schools with students sitting the HSC and students with special needs.

On Friday, the Local Emergency Management Committee representatives met to discuss the current situation. It was revealed that it would take up to 20 days for power to be fully restored.

Friday morning’s meeting was told that Thursday night further damage was discovered to a line which provides power to Wilcannia and Menindee.

Technicians had been working to assess the situation which is being made more challenging due to the unsealed road network.

Central Darling Shire Council is working with the local chemist to see what needs to be done regarding cool storage of medicines. There are no reported issues with the aged and disabled residents and door-knocking for welfare purposes has been occurring.

At White Cliffs the local Hotel offered freezer space to residents.

Hotel owners Matt Young and Sarah Ker said their power came back on at about 5.30pm Friday evening.

“The whole town is running on back up generators now,” Matt said.

“We’ve got our own back up generator. A few people came in with goods to store.

“Most people just have one fridge or freezer so to run a generator for that – it would get pretty expensive.

“They’re saying it could go on for 20 days. It’d be cheaper not to have any food in the fridge.

“We’re a small community so we help out where we can.”

Matt said the hotel has the normal tourist trade and a few workers utilising accommodation.

“We had an old generator, but it wasn’t big enough, so we had to shut off some air cooling and some cool rooms. But if we keep the cool rooms shut up – the temperature will keep.

“But now the big generator is running the whole town centre.”

Matt said after the power went out at midnight Wednesday, the town got together to help out on Thursday.

“The nurses had to fuel their own generator, but they quickly had about three to four volunteers helping so they didn’t have to do it themselves.”

Also in White Cliffs, Blue White has offered the community the use of a refrigerated shipping container for their food supplies.

Matt said a long-term solution is needed so something like this doesn’t happen again.

“We probably need to sort out something with the solar and wind farm.

“We’ve got solar panels on the hotel but once the power goes out – they’re no good.

“We need something to store the power from the solar and wind farms around Broken Hill to use in the long term.

“Western NSW needs to benefit from it, we’ve got the best sun out here and all the power from it is getting sent away.”

While communities are being run on generators, Essential Energy customers across the area are being asked to switch off non-essential appliances such as pool pumps, clothes dryers, dishwashers and similar between 5.30pm and 10.30pm daily to help maintain power for the community.

If there isn’t enough power available to meet customer demand, it will be necessary to interrupt power supply to some customers to allow access to power on a rotational basis. This did occur Friday night, 18 October, at 7.00pm when demand on the generator reached capacity and power was turned off to 950 customers for two – 2.5 hours.

It is also important that customers’ power use between sunrise and 5.30pm remains the same as normal to avoid an oversupply of rooftop solar generation making it harder to keep the power system stable.

Essential Energy will also be managing controlled load – or off-peak – electricity to assist with keeping the power on, so customers may notice their hot water units heating at different times to what is normal.

Essential Energy and Transgrid continue to work closely to maintain power to customers while repairs on the transmission network take place.

This article  appeared on  A Home in the Outback  on 19 October 2024.