Final stages of the Mooroopna Zone Substation restoration underway

The restoration of the Mooroopna Zone Substation is entering its final stages, with Powercor beginning to reconnect some homes and businesses to the site.

Powercor has safely re-energised the substation, and we are completing our final inspections, repairs and testing.

We have now reconnected parts of Tatura to the zone substation. We expect to have all homes and businesses reconnected to the substation by the weekend, and this will allow us to restore a more stable and reliable network for the region. However, this work is dependent on our final safety inspections.

Earlier this month, rising water from the Goulburn River breached a levy and flooded the site. In response, Powercor de-energised the zone substation to minimise the safety risk to the community and reduce the potential for long-term damage.

Despite the zone substation being turned off, Powercor was able to switch homes and businesses to other parts of the network and build new sections of infrastructure to return power supply to about 10,688 homes and businesses.

Mooroopna Zone Substation supplies power to Mooroopna, Tatura, Ardmona, parts of Shepparton, Kialla, Haston, Murchison, Dhurringile, Rushworth and surrounding towns.

As part of our detailed re-energisation plan, we have identified about five customers will experience a temporary power outage during the transfer. We have contacted these customers directly to inform them of the outage.

While we do not expect other outages to occur as we transfer customers, we have crews ready to respond quickly and as safely as possible to get power back on if unplanned outages do happen.

We would also encourage customers to prepare for potential outages and know what they would do if the lights did go out. Advice on preparing for power outages is available at Be prepared for outages.

Since water was pumped from the substation site last Thursday, crews have been cleaning, inspecting, repairing and testing critical assets within the zone substation.

During the weekend, an aerial inspection was conducted over a main powerline that connects the zone substation to Shepparton to identify potential fault risks.

Thank you to our customers who have been so supportive and understanding during this flooding event. We are proud to be part of such a strong community and our thoughts are with those who have been affected by these devastating floods.

We also thank the SES, ADF, and the Bendigo and Shepparton incident control centres who all played a significant role in our restoration work.

For customers who will be returning to their properties as flood water recedes in many towns, we would strongly advise them to take significant precautions when it comes to electrical safety.

For customers returning to their properties after flooding we advise:

1. Proceed with caution – don’t assume your power is disconnected and do not try to operate any electrical appliances if there has been flood damage.
2. Get a Registered Electrical Contractor to check your appliances and switchboard to confirm they are safe to use.
3. If you’ve been disconnected by us, then your Registered Electrical Contractor will need to provide us with a certificate of electrical safety following their inspection. We’ll reconnect the service remotely.

For information and advice on what to do if you are impacted by flooding, visit Flood Response.