Digging near the Monaro Highway caused power outages across eastern Canberra on Thursday after a third party damaged power lines.
Utility provider Evoenergy used the outage to remind Canberrans to always 'dial before you dig'.
A spokeswoman said it was a common occurrence but power was down for less than an hour.
The outage affected Kingston, Narrabundah, Fyshwick and Symonston.
Evoenergy said third party damage affected about 2000 Canberrans in the 2016-17 financial year with customers losing about 100 minutes of power each time.
It also said there were 240 "avoidable hits" on Canberra's natural gas network, equating to two hits every three days.
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