Ausnet apologises for blackouts

Customers have been complaining about an increasing number of outages interfering with businesses, farms and residential services.

An Ausnet spokesperson has acknowledged reliability has recently declined on the Benalla to Euroa line (known as BN11).

“More customers are experiencing outages, and the average duration of each outage has increased,’’ the unnamed spokeswoman told Country News.

“AusNet apologises to the communities served by this line for the number and duration of power outages recently experienced.

“We know this is frustrating and is having an impact on our customers and we are working hard to remedy the situation.”

Businesses in Euroa and Violet Town have complained that unplanned outages have forced them to shut down.

AusNet says it has identified some immediate measures to improve reliability for communities on the Benalla to Euroa line, and they will continue to investigate longer-term solutions.

“While some of the recent outages were due to extreme weather, they have also been influenced by the new bushfire mitigation technology (known as Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter or REFCL) we recently installed at Violet Town in late 2023,” the Ausnet spokeswoman said.

“While REFCLs are important technology to reduce the risk of the electricity network starting bushfires, they also make the network more sensitive to faults and it can take longer to restore them.

“This is because when the bushfire protection operates it takes out the whole feeder line, rather than just a single or few sections.

“We then need to locate and clear the fault before reenergising the line, which is a more time-consuming process.

“The impact is more prominent on long radial (single pathway) powerlines such as Benalla to Euroa, which is the longest in Victoria (1206km) and has no alternative path for power supply.

“As short-term mitigation, we’ve made some changes to our REFCL equipment settings on low fire danger days to reduce the impact of the duration of outages if they occur. On high-risk days we will have extra fault restoration crews on standby.

“We’ve also cancelled all non-critical planned outages to minimise impact on the community while we work through the solutions.”

State Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland forecast in September that there would be more energy blackouts over summer.

Ausnet says they recently upgraded their Outage Tracker so customers will now get more information about outages and the restoration status.

AusNet customers who have registered as Life Support Customers receive SMS updates, alerts and tips on how to prepare for interruptions and outages.

The company said it has received nine claims for compensation across the Strathbogie region in relation to these outages.

“Customers who have experienced sustained unplanned outages will be automatically compensated in their next quarterly energy bill under the Electricity Distribution Code of Practice Guaranteed Service Level scheme.”

The poor performance of the line has been taken up by Ms Cleeland, who has promised to raise it in state parliament.

A series of recent public meetings in Violet Town, Euroa, Nagambie and Longwood attracted almost 300 people, who raised a range of problems caused by the blackouts.

Federal Member for Nicholls Sam Birrell said the problems in the Euroa district threw a spotlight on the Federal Government’s renewable energy policies, which were putting extra pressure on energy infrastructure.

The current infrastructure was unable to provide reliable service and couldn’t be expected to handle the demands of large-scale solar and wind farm expansions, he said.