Ergon Energy confirm cause of widespread South West QLD power outages

While 120 Ergon customers are still without power, businesses across South West Queensland have begun counting the cost of the lengthy outage. Here’s what happened.

While the majority of the region’s power has been reconnected, some 120 Ergon customers are still without power in South West Queensland.

An Ergon Energy spokesman said on the night of Tuesday, December 19, lightning struck a high voltage line during a storm, causing damage to the line that serves more than 4000 Ergon customers including residents and businesses.

The spokesman said repair crews set out at first light on Wednesday morning to repair the broken insulators, but became bogged on their way because of the rain on Tuesday night.

Residents and businesses in Charleville, Cunnamulla and Quilpie spent much of Wednesday without power.

By noon on Wednesday a majority of premises had been reconnected.

Ergon hoped to have the power up and running again by the early evening of Wednesday, December 20. However, by that afternoon all but 120 of the 4817 customers who lost power had been reconnect.

Nonetheless, businesses are starting to count the cost of the outage.

Hotel Corones in Charleville confirmed that the power outage meant that all their online systems went down and they were unable to keep their food refrigerated. Their restaurant will remain closed tonight after they had to dispose of all the food in their fridges. Without power, the hotel was unable to see any of the bookings and was not able to access Wi-Fi.

In good news, the local Charleville IGA was able to keep their stock refrigerated throughout the outage.