Cairns outages: Ergon reveals fix plans as residents seek answers on outage-plagued suburbs

The lights are going out too often in a number of Cairns suburbs, leaving residents and businesses in the dark. Ergon has explained the causes and what is being done to fix the problem.

RESIDENTS in power-outage plagued suburbs are being plunged into darkness more often and for longer periods of time than other areas in the region.

A Cairns Post investigation into reported outages over the past year has revealed the hardest hit suburb is Edmonton, followed by Bentley Park, Bayview Heights, Woree and Smithfield.

Edmonton Butchery owner Rob Gaul said his small business lost three days and more than $12,000 worth of trade from a widespread outage in March, caused by a severe weather event associated with Tropical Cyclone Niran.

Mr Gaul said he had thousands of dollars worth of meat stock at risk of spoiling, and had to work fast to keep it preserved.

“We had a little bit of spoilage, but we were constantly monitoring the temperatures and once it got down around 2-3 degrees in the indoor coolers, we moved them out into the outdoor freezers,” he said.

“Some businesses have generators, but for our purposes we’d have needed an industrial generator big enough to operate our freezers, which is incredibly expensive.

“We actually had arranged to hire one from a company, but luckily the power came back on just as I was about to sign off on it, so we dodged a bullet.

Edmonton Butchery owner Rob Gaul lost power for three days in March and estimates that he lost more than $12,000 in trade and spoiled meat. Picture: Brendan Radke

Mr Gaul said the experience had been a sobering reminder of just how much his business depended on infrastructure being able to weather a storm.

“Ours was one of the last to be put back on which is a bit strange – working on the highway, you’d think the coverage would be pretty good,” he said.

“The trouble for us was (we felt) there was no plan or support – we had to call up Ergon to find out what going on and they said they didn’t know how long it was going to be ... basically it was our problem.”

“I would say if Ergon knows there’s problems with their system, they really should be putting more care into how they can help compensate people ... it really isn’t good enough to say that’s your problem,” he said.

Ergon Energy data shows the urban electrical feeders with the most significant outages supply customers at Trinity Beach, Mooroobool, Bayview Heights and Kewarra Beach, prompting the power giant to take drastic action on these sections of its network.

A 60 per cent increase in maintenance work to fix these feeders will be rolled out, after an increase in the number of outages caused by defects of the high-voltage network – the dominant cause of outages.

An Ergon spokeswoman also noted a “marked rise in animal impacts, like bird and bat strikes” had contributed to a rise in outages.

The severe weather event associated with Tropical Cyclone Niran has had by far the biggest impact on the Far North network in 2021.

At the peak of the event, 43,000 customers lost power from Cairns to the Cassowary Coast and across the Atherton Tablelands.

Cyclone Niran damage. Trees down at Cairns TAFE campus. Picture: Stewart McLean

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According to Ergon, most of the damage was caused by vegetation, whether it was large trees in saturated areas falling on to powerlines or branches and other debris blown into the network.

“This event was a reminder to residents that tropical lows and cyclones can have an impact without even crossing the coast, so anyone in a disaster zone should be prepared for power interruptions,” she said.

“Thanks to a mighty effort from the 250 crew members involved in the response, within 48 hours power had been restored to 42,000 customers.”

The outages had a devastating impact on communities and businesses, who found themselves waiting up to three days for the power to be restored.

The next most significant outage in terms of customer numbers was caused by damage to equipment at a substation on December 22, 2020.

This caused power to go out at Bayview Heights, Bungalow, Earlville, Kanimbla, Manoora, Manunda, Mooroobool, Mount Sheridan, Portsmith, Westcourt and Woree.

Around 18,000 customers lost power at 12.30pm but within an hour that had been reduced to fewer than 3000 customers. Power was progressively restored to the remaining customers and all had power back on by 3.10pm that day.

Flooding, heavy winds and fallen trees caused significant damage to Ergon Energy infrastructure at Normanton when Cyclone Imogen whipped the region in January. PICTURE: ERGON

The Ergon spokeswoman said while the overhead network was more susceptible to damage from storms and cyclones, it was much easier for crews to find faults and fix them.

“The underground network is more expensive to construct, more prone to flood damage and faults typically take longer to find and fix,” she said.

Excluding those two issues, power outages have been most frequent at Edmonton, which the Cairns Post has reported as having had at least 9100 customers lose power since January 2020, followed by Bentley Park, Bayview Heights and Woree, tired at 6600 and Smithfield at 6480.

Ergon’s spokeswoman said it was committed to delivering a safe, reliable and affordable electricity supply.

“In the Tropical Coast area over the last nine months, 20,000 asset inspections have been conducted. We ensure any priority defects identified by asset inspectors are repaired by a specified date for safety reasons,” she said.

“Network upgrades reduce the risk of unplanned outages in the future, so while the number of scheduled outages for maintenance has increased in the short-term, customers will benefit from improved reliability in the long-term.

“Over the last nine months crews in the Tropical Coast area have replaced more than 400 poles and 2500 service wires, resolved 200 powerline clearance issues and there is an extensive program of work underway at the Gordonvale, Cairns Terminal and Tully substations.

“After the severe weather event in early March, crews effectively rebuilt sections of the network in some heavily-impacted areas, like Gordonvale and Yarrabah.”

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Originally published as Cairns outages: Ergon reveals fix plans as residents seek answers on outage-plagued suburbs