State swelters through record-breaking heatwave as Otways fire grows
Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio has defended the state’s energy grid, insisting that fire-ravaged infrastructure – not supply shortages – left thousands of Victorians in the dark yesterday.
D’Ambrosio told radio station 3AW yesterday that the Australian energy market operator had advised her the state had “more than sufficient reserves in place to meet the demand on our electricity supply”.
Outages peaked at more than 100,000 homes late yesterday, with tens of thousands remaining off the grid well into the night.
“Yesterday at the peak, between 6pm and 6.30pm, we had Victorians creating a peak demand for electricity, about 10,800 megawatts, and we had supply that could accommodate 12,400 megawatts,” D’Ambrosio said on 3AW earlier today.
“We had enough electricity to meet the need. The problem wasn’t at the electricity generation end, it was at the poles and wires end. It’s like having plenty of petrol in the car, but if your roads have been destroyed you really can’t get anywhere.
“At about 9.30pm last night, about 103,000 Victorians were off supply.” She said that number had significantly reduced today, with around 16,000 homes still offline as of 11am.
“Supply was not the issue. It has always been the case that with extreme weather events, these problems are occurring. The problem is that we need to make sure the power company crews are on the ground when it’s safe to be on the ground, and to get people back on the power supply.”
She said there had been lots of blown fuses, line damage from falling trees and “in some cases, the power lines themselves have just been burnt out by bushfires”.
“And then, of course, heat stress was a really big factor. The physical infrastructure wasn’t able to cope with it, and it failed.”
D’Ambrosio said the government had told energy companies to improve their resilience plans and to be better prepared for extreme weather events.
“I’m very, very confident that over a period of time we’ll have more than enough replacement electricity by the new technology generators to keep the lights on for Victorians,” she said.
