Nearly 6000 hit by western Victoria power outage

Thousands of customers are without power across western Victoria as power poles heat up with one catching fire in Ballarat.

Nearly 6000 people across western Victoria were without electricity through much of Wednesday, mainly because of weather that heats up power poles and causes faults.

At the time of writing, 5958 people in total had been hit by outages, including 3684 in Ballarat.

While some smaller outages listed by Powercor are due to birds and storms, the ones in Ballarat, Woodend North, Bonshaw, Bakery Hill, Eastern View, Coleraine, Merino, Henty, Grassdale, and Cape Bridgewater are said to be under investigation.

It is unknown which outages have the same cause, but a Powercor spokesman said the company was responding to “a number of power outages in the Ballarat area this morning that have been caused by the weather conditions”.

“A combination of hot, dry weather followed by light misty rain can occasionally create faults on the network,” she said.

“During a dry period, dust collects on infrastructure on the poles, and when this dust mixes with moisture (such a light drizzly rain) it can form a film on the insulators and create a path for electricity to flow across.

“A very small amount of electricity can leak through this path into the wooden cross-arms below, causing them to heat up and cause a fault.”

She said crews were working to restore power to the affected homes and businesses.

Video posted on a Ballarat social media group about 1am showed a small fire flaring atop a power pole in Ballarat Central.

The expected time of restoration varied by location and was pushed back at least twice in Ballarat Central, which had power back, at least in some places, by 4pm.