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Power outage – the Premier, Chris Minns, came and listened, and the Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe

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NSW Reconstruction Authority visit

Fulfilling the commitment of the Premier Chris Minns and the Minister for Energy Penny Sharpe, staff from the NSW Reconstruction Authority visited Wilcannia on Tuesday 29th October. The Power Outage/Storm was declared a Natural Disaster covering Broken Hill, Central Darling and the Unincorporated Area.

While here, based in the Community Hall, they took details from residents to give them access to the $200 payment to cover some of the losses occurred during the power outage.

This is in addition to the previously announced payment for each residential electricity account holder. As was pointed out at the meeting with the Premier, not everyone who has lost food and medicines is an electricity account holder.

Small to medium businesses are also eligible to apply for a grant of $400.

The Authority took the opportunity to get the community to give their thoughts on what the town needed, especially in light of the recent event.

Delivery of food hampers is also being arranged.

Service NSW will be in town on the 19th and 26th November to process the promised $200 per adult payments. These payments will be directed into bank accounts, not paid in cash. To access these you can apply on the Service NSW app, through their website or by phone. One of the spokespersons said if you are having trouble with the app, find a child to help you. Help will also be available on the day.

In the meantime, back in the hall today, agencies offering Disaster Recovery Wellbeing Support were providing advice on various matters. These included accessing the $100 food vouchers, valid at the local store, any IGA or Woolworths, also the $50 fuel voucher to be redeemed at Ampol service stations. St Vinnies are managing this on behalf of the NSW Government. Food Bank hampers were also being handed out – see photo for contents.

Chris Minns visit

After arriving via the Rural Fire Service helicopter, Premier of NSW Chris Minns and Member for Barwon Roy Butler entered the Golf Club with no fanfare and immediately began to introduce themselves to the 60 Wilcannia, White Cliffs and rural residents present. This open approach set the tone of the meeting. Between them they spoke to almost everyone before the slightly more formal session.

Chair of the Wilcannia Community Working Party, Rhonda Hynch welcomed the Premier to town, adding that she has been campaigning for a $40m renewable energy project in Wilcannia and asked for letters of support. The Premier admitted he did not know the cost of back-up solar and batteries.

When questioned on why the NSW government had not gone straight to TransGrid to pay compensation the Premier said it would have taken too long, also under their licence, TransGrid have a maximum of 60 minutes to resume power transmission in the event of a breakdown, and the fine for [them] not providing power is only $250,000. To date TransGrid have committed $1.5 million to support temporary supply. The Premier said this outage had given the Government more understanding of dealing with natural disasters, however he found that even he could not get reliable, accurate information and that communications with the community were also slow and mixed.

Many speakers, especially from White Cliffs, raised the lack of telephone coverage, at one stage even “000” was out. After no phone for three days, they were reconnected for two, then Telstra took the generator away again. In response to this and other comments on communications the Premier said that Starlink is being rolled out and that he would be talking to Telstra regarding installation of back-up generators. He assured the meeting that this would not happen again. Rural residents also pointed out the closing down of the 3G network had impacted their communications, which the Premier and Roy Butler acknowledged. A number of questions were asked about the proposed payment of $200 compensation. Both the Premier and local member Roy Butler said this was still being worked through, would be done as soon as possible and that it would not just be a $200 off people’s electricity account.

Pre-warning of power cuts was also requested. The Premier said that by doing this it had been found a “pre-cut over spike” in electricity usage which made the problem harder to deal with. He added that they were getting as many generators on line as possible to avoid future load shedding.

Service providers, including the Local Emergency Management Committee were also the subject of many comments and questions. The local manager of Maari Ma said they had been checking every day on all the elderly residents on their books and to date there had been no problems.

Questions were asked regarding the prices at the local shop and a request made to have the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) look into the business.

Penny Sharpe’s visit

Following the Premiers visit, Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe hosted another, smaller gathering on Sunday the 27th October. Adopting the same approach as the Premier, the Minister spoke to local business owners, before answering questions from the floor. The Minister said that it should not have happened, however it had and lessons were being learnt. Four separate generators had been installed to cover the needs of the outlying areas, keeping them separate from the system supplying the Broken Hill community. Each of these uses 250 litres of diesel an hour. Penny urged anyone with solar panels to turn them off if you know how to, as generators like a steady rate, not peaks and troughs. She also added that connecting the renewable energy “farms” in Broken Hill to the grid was not as easy as people imagined as they provide electricity as Direct Current (DC) which has to be converted to Alternating Current (AC) to be used by the grid, hence large batteries are required.

The Minister also announced that the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) would be in Broken Hill the following week to assess any TransGrid licence breaches, and while TransGrid were only liable for a $250,000 fine per breach, the liability of the Directors of TransGrid and a breach of licence was also being considered.

In a statement issued to the paper today, 5th November, IPART said: “The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is investigating the safety and reliability of transmission infrastructure supplying Broken Hill and surrounding areas.

Tribunal member and Chair of IPART’s Energy Network Regulation Committee Jonathan Coppel has visited Broken Hill recently with IPART staff as part of the investigation.

IPART will consider all available evidence as part of its investigation and will communicate the outcome of the investigation when it has been completed. No indication of how long was given.

Wilcannia News November 2024

This article appeared in Wilcannia News, November 2024.

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