Curra residents power outage prompts 500+ petition

A stay-at-home mum who has endured 12 blackouts in 15 days in peak hot weather has made a rallying call to her community, which is fed-up at the slow response to their decades-long predicament.

Celeste Rigby has launched a campaign after months of constant black and brown outs throughout Curra, many of them seemingly unrelated to storm activity. Picture: Supplied

A petition by a stay-at-home mother has received a groundswell of support, with residents and businesses speaking out, outraged over fluctuating unplanned power outages unrelated to storms, leaving hundreds without power and internet for several hours.

When Celeste Rigby first moved to Curra, 17km north of Gympie, four years ago, she learned quickly to deal with power outages, ensuring surge protectors at power points, a generator and bottled water was on hand, and even installed a $1500 aerial booster for internet.

As she got to know other residents she learned that power outages, particularly short brown outs, in the area have been going on for “decades”, but as the last few years rolled on she noticed it went from bad to worse and would hit the hardest in the height of summer.

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When Celeste Rigby first moved to Curra, 17km north of Gympie, four years ago, she learned quickly to deal with power outages, ensuring surge protectors at power points, a generator and bottled water was on hand, and even installed a $1500 aerial booster for internet. Picture: Supplied

“It has progressively got worse in the last three years, at first it was brownouts with flickering lights, and then would return in a matter of minutes, now there are blackouts that go on for several hours, without warning and are more frequent,” she said.

This December she counted 12 several hour blackouts in 15 days, and said none of them seemed to be storm related.

“When the power goes out you lose everything – lights, electricity, reception, water – you’ve got one toilet flush left,” Ms Rigby said.

Active in a lot of Gympie community social media groups, Ms Rigby thought to get a better understanding of the issue and posted polls.

She was overloaded with responses within the Curra area when other, more rural areas of Gympie such as Rainbow Beach and Tin Can Bay barely reported the same problem.

Ms Rigby said she wanted more accountability or at least recognition from authorities over the issue rather than receiving the constantly dissatisfied “doing the best we can” response from Ergon Energy.

Gympie state MP Tony Perrett said he had also been receiving letters over unplanned outages not related to storm activity and contacted Ergon before Christmas, alongside making a commitment to bring the issue to the Minister.

“Reliability of power is a serious issue,” he said.

“Clearly there is additional demand for our growing region.

“People understandably accept that blackouts occur from storms, weather events, floods, but I’m told theses outages are occurring when none of that is going on.”

When Celeste Rigby first moved to Curra, 17km north of Gympie, four years ago, she learned quickly to deal with power outages, ensuring surge protectors at power points, a generator and bottled water was on hand, and even installed a $1500 aerial booster for internet. Â

According to a statement from Ergon Energy, an electricity distribution network upgrade has been launched in the Curra region and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2024.

“The proposed project is aimed at improving the electricity supply reliability in the Curra region by adding an alternative feeder to the area while increasing network capacity in the area,” it said.

Ergon Energy said there had been five unplanned network outages throughout Curra in December due to storm activities and other power outages from “other weather impacts”.

On December 28, Celeste Rigby launched a petition demanding reliable electricity supply in Curra and surrounds.

On January 23, 2024, the petition had reached 675 signatures.

Click here to sign the petition. 

If you have also experienced black or brown outs in Curra and would like to share your story, email [e-mail]

Ergon Energy listed the outages in Curra due to storm activity throughout December as:

15/12/2023 from 17:20 to 18:40

16/12/2023 from 18:10 to 23:30

17/12/2023 from 16:00 to 17:10

19/12/2023 from 18:20 to 19:30

Outage that impacted a small area of Curra:

29/12/2023 from 18:10 to 19:20

Originally published as Curra residents power outage prompts 500+ petition