Rural communities
Information to support our rural customers
Being prepared for power outages
Whether it’s a storm, vehicle accident or we need to disconnect your electricity supply for maintenance or upgrade, it’s never convenient to be without power.
With thousands of kilometres of power poles and lines – many traversing remote, rural areas with no capacity to provide temporary supply from alternate substations – it can take time to repair every fault, particularly following a storm. Please be assured though, we’re working as quickly and safely as possible to fully restore supply.
Being prepared and having a plan for your home, farm or business can help you manage until the power is back on.
Storm warning
Ensure all trees and vegetation are well clear of power lines. Use a Powerco-approved arborist to trim trees if they’re growing within 4m of lines. Secure anything that could blow into lines, such as corrugated iron roofing, loose plastic bale wrapping, outdoor furniture and trampolines.
Back-up generation
Consider a back-up generator as part of your rural business contingency planning. Then, even if the power is out, you can keep operating as usual. If you have a generator, check you have sufficient fuel.
Operating gates, doors and other equipment
If you have electric gates or garage doors, make sure you know how to manually override them prior to any power cut. If you have a rotary milking system, check if it can be manually overridden to release your cows if there’s an outage during milking.
No power?
- Log your outage either with your energy retailer or report it here.
Report an outage.
- If you have multiple power connections on your property – eg house, milking shed, water pumps, shearing shed – it’s important to report whether outages are affecting all your operations, or one or several connections. Knowing the ICP numbers for each connection can help us locate the fault. Your ICP numbers can be found on your electricity bill.
- Keep up to date on our outage map. If your outage isn’t showing but your power is still out, it’s important to contact your retailer or report the outage via our online form.