How long do the residents of Lake Cathie have to put up with power outages and blackouts? Since Christmas we are averaging one a week. With the housing growth the existing sub station is totally inadequate. We live adjacent to it and recently we have seen sparks and arcing coming from it. Obviously power surges and spikes are causing irreparable damage to everyone’s televisions, computers, fridges etc. Here we are paying some of the highest power prices in the world and Essential Energy are providing a third rate service. Looks as though we will all have wait until the substation explodes before the new one gets started on the ghost road.
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Gary Olive, Lake Cathie
Essential Energy’s response
Essential Energy is committed to ensuring a reliable power supply to customers.
During the week of Christmas customers in Lake Cathie experienced an unplanned power outage due to the severe summer storms that rolled through the area. The storms brought down branches over powerlines and lightning strikes damaged equipment. Crews worked as quickly as safety would allow to get the power back on.
On Saturday, January 20 3000 customers in Lake Cathie were affected by an unplanned outage from 12.30am to 6.20am when a fault was detected on the network. A pole near the Lake Cathie Zone Substation was reported as arcing, and on inspection crews replaced an insulator.
The electricity network in Lake Cathie is meeting the power needs of the local community, and Essential Energy has the ability to re-route power around the network when unplanned outages occur, to minimise the number of customers and length of time customers are affected.
If customers have concerns with their power, or appliances following an unplanned outage, they can contact Essential Energy on 13 20 80.
Essential Energy’s electricity pricing reflects the costs involved in building, operating and maintaining the largest electricity distribution network in Australia, and one of the largest rural networks in the world.
Since July 2012, Essential Energy has been undertaking a program of reform to improve its efficiency and keep downward pressure on network charges. As part of this reform process, Essential Energy delivered three consecutive years of annual network distribution price decreases and contributed $1.7 billion in savings.
