Update on power and flood impacts in Northern and Western Victoria – 17 October

Update on power outages in northern and western Victoria

Powercor has restored power to about 4,200 customers in Mooroopna, Tatura and surrounding region and work is underway today to get more customers back on supply.

Four generators have been installed and are operating in Tatura, and crews and our control room have been able to switch many homes and businesses to other parts of our network. Sites that have been restored include the Tatura relief centre, sewerage pumping and a telecommunications exchange site.

Since yesterday, we have now been able to reduce the number of customers off supply in connection with the zone substation, from more than 5,900 to about 1,700. Areas still affected by the outage include Hendersyde, Toolamba, Toolamba West, Dhurringile, Arcadia, Murchison, Murchison East and Moorilim.

To allow us to bring more customers back on, we have increased demand on other parts of our network and stretched its capacity. As a result, to support the reliability of the network, customers who have had power restored are being encouraged to keep their power consumption to essential use by turning off unnecessary appliances and setting their heating at 21 degrees. 

This work is in response to significant flooding at the Mooroopna Zone Substation. To minimise the safety risk to the community and reduce the potential for long-term damage to infrastructure, Powercor de-energised the site at about 4am yesterday.

The zone substation supplies about 10,600 homes and businesses in the Mooroopna, Tatura, Ardmona, Murchison, Dhurringile, Toolamba, Byrneside and surrounding towns.

We will continue to explore other ways to bring power back on to the remaining local customers. However, many customers will remain off supply until water subsides and it is safe for us to re-energise the site. We are advising customers that the power will be off for multiple days.

Thank you to those communities who have been affected by these outages, during what is such a difficult time for them. Their patience and understanding as our crews have conducted our work has been extraordinary and we want to assure them our focus is on safely restoring power as soon as it’s possible to do so.

As river levels continue to rise across parts of northern Victoria, Powercor is continuing to monitor threats to power assets and working to mitigate against the flood risk.

We know this is a difficult situation for the local community and we are working closely with emergency agencies and local authorities as this flooding emergency continues.

On-the-ground assistance

In support of other flood affected areas, our Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle (MERV) will be based at the relief centre at the Bendigo Showgrounds today to provide local residents updates about electricity supplies and charging points for mobile devices.  When access is available, we plan to bring MERV into Tatura to provide similar support to local customers.

Powercor is today providing bags of ice to local residents in the Mooroopna region. The ice is available opposite the Tatura Relief Centre, in Hastie Street.

All customers can keep updated on restoration times via our website and SMS.

Advice on returning to properties

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.

1. Get a Registered Electrical Contractor to check your appliances and switchboard to confirm they are safe to use.
2. 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.

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For media inquiries, please contact (03) 9683 4342.

Advice on what to do if you are impacted by flooding is available here