By Kyra Gillespie
Locals are calling for a review of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)’s load shedding protocols after households in bush fire-prone areas had their power cut on Friday.
As temperatures soared into the 40s on Friday 25 January, tens of thousands of properties across the state were left without power.
Closer to home, power outages experienced in high-risk bush fire areas such as Upper Beaconsfield and Emerald sparked concern from residents.
The devastating aftermath of Ash Wednesday on the Upper Beaconsfield community was in the forefront of former Upper Beaconsfield resident and Toomuc Valley farm owner Danny Quagliani’s mind.
“I’m amazed that they would cut the power off – even for a short period of time – in an area that has a history as dark and Upper Beaconsfield has had,” he said.
“If you turn the power off in a suburban area it’s just annoying – the air con doesn’t work and you can’t watch TV. Do that to us and we lose our phones and internet and that’s how we get warned if there’s a fire coming.
“They really need to think about how they do their load shedding that doesn’t put a community like ours at risk.”
Load shedding is when power companies start switching off their customers’ power supply, creating rolling blackouts in different parts of the state to prevent the entire system from melting down.
Over the course of the afternoon, more than 200,000 customers experienced interruption to their power supply, with up to 100,000 customers being impacted at any one time.
An Upper Beaconsfield CFA volunteer, who asked to have his name withheld, said the load shedding caused a blackout at the fire station on the scorching-hot day.
With no backup generator, the volunteer firefighter had no choice but to jump in a tanker.
“I was sitting at the station when the power went off. As soon as it happened I decided to go out in one of the trucks and patrol the area, just in case anything happened. I was out there for about 30 minutes before the power went back on again.
“The idea of having a high bushv\ fire-prone area having blackouts on bad days is always problematic, because people rely on being able to sit at the computer to find out what’s happening on the fire front.
“If they lose power they lose the ability to search on the computer to see any incidents near them. Mobile phone reception is always really bad up here, so it’s a double whammy – poor reception and no power makes it very difficult for us.
“They should select other areas that don’t face a fire risk.”
He said the brigade has looked into getting a backup generator, however the endeavour is too costly.
“A while ago we looked at setting up the station so we could use a generator to have our own power, but that would involve rewiring the station and could cost anywhere between $12,000 and $20,000.
“From our point of view that cost makes it untenable.”
Ongoing health problems left Upper Beaconsfield resident Cathy and her husband no choice but to fork out thousands for a backup generator.
While they were lucky to have the generator on the Friday, they felt for others who were not so fortunate.
“We have no connected facilities, the only thing we have is power; without it we’ve got no sewerage, no gas and no water. When the power cuts off all our water pumps cut off,” she said.
“We’re lucky we’ve got a generator, but there are a lot of properties up this way that don’t have mains water who would have got cut off. If you can’t get water on such a hot day it’s a worry.
“This sort of thing shouldn’t be happening; we are paying such high rates and property prices are so expensive up this way. I understand that trees come down and the like, but to have a brownout up here is another thing.”
A spokesperson for AusNet Services, Cardinia Shire’s network distributor, said the company took bushfire risk areas into account when planning the outages.
“AusNet Services was directed by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to implement their load shedding plans across the network from 12 noon, Friday 25 January 2019,” the spokesperson said.
“AusNet Services carried out load shedding in accordance with standard industry operating procedures designed to protect critical assets, to minimise disruption to customers while ensuring community safety.
“This is why we take into account bushfire risk areas when considering load shedding, including where customers are reliant on pumped water supply, based on information obtained from the water companies.
“We also undertake comprehensive communications activities to help our customers to be prepared to be without power, working together with government, councils and other agencies like the CFA, EMV and AEMO.”
AusNet also said only a “relatively low” number of properties were impacted by the load shedding in Cardinia.
“In the Cardinia shire, the suburbs impacted by load shedding last Friday included Beaconsfield, Emerald and Pakeham in relatively low numbers within the total number of customers subject to load shedding across our network.”
AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman said electricity distributors chose areas where demand was highest for load shedding, to achieve the maximum benefit of reduction in power use.
Victoria’s Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said most affected customers had their power interrupted for no more than an hour, but some parts of the state experienced outages of up to two hours.
