November 14, 2013
Ergon Energy crews from Maryborough and Kingaroy are heading to areas in and around Goomeri today to assist Murgon crews restore power to almost 200 customers who have been left without supply following last night’s storms.
A helicopter patrol has also been organised to identify damage to the network that will require repairs after the storm brought hail, lightning, heavy rain and strong winds to the area.
The largest single outage is affecting about 100 customers south of Goomeri, who were among 640 customers on the Goomeri feeder line whose power supply was interrupted about 5:15pm.
Power was restored to all apart from the currently affected customers at 7:45pm and Ergon crews then repaired downed power lines to reinstate power to the remaining customers just before 3:00am.
However, the power to these 100 customers tripped again about 4:15am so the helicopter patrol will look for the cause.
About 80 customers in areas north of Goomeri, including Tansey and Boonara, are also still affected by outages.
Earlier during the storm, the 6200 customers supplied from Murgon substation had their power interrupted for 17 minutes from 5:28pm, but no repairs were required to the sub-transmission line into the substation to restore power.
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UPDATE 12.15pm: The chopper patrol has located two power poles and multiple power lines that have come down in the area south of Goomeri, where 108 customers are without power supply.
Crews have begun working to repair this damage, while the chopper patrol continues on another section of the line.
Crews have also found a pole down on Boonaravale Road, Goomeri, which is affecting the power supply to 43 customers in Goomeri and Boonara.
Power has been restored this morning to a handful of customers from two smaller outages where power was off overnight.
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UPDATE 2:00pm: Power is expected to be restored about 5:00pm for 108 customers in Goomeri and areas to the south of the town.
Apart from the downed poles and wires previously identified, crews will also remove two trees that have come to rest on power lines.
The 43 affected customers in Goomeri and Boonara can expect to have their power restored about 3:30pm.
And 28 customers in the Boonara and Tansey areas should have their power restored about 5pm after crews have repaired a second section of line that came down.
The other remaining outage is affecting two customers at Tansey where low-voltage lines came down and crews have isolated supply at the transformer as a safety measure.
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UPDATE 4:30pm: The high-voltage network has now been reinstated, apart from a section of line supplying 28 customers in the Boonara and Tansey areas, which is expected to be back on line about 5:00pm.
Crews have turned their attention to rectifying the multiple faults on the low-voltage network and service lines supplying individual customers.
They expect to complete these repairs today to all properties, apart from those that have suffered severe storm damage, such as sheds blown over and homes without roofs, where it would not be safe to do so.
