More than a week after deadly storms tore through Victoria, knocking out power to more than half a million customers, the lights are still out in some hard-hit areas of the state.
When 7.30 visited the Cockatoo relief centre in the foothills of Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges on Tuesday, thousands of households and businesses had been without power for seven days.
Caroline Askew and her three sons have been without power for a week, and it’s not the first time they’ve been left in the dark.
“It’s getting a bit long now. You know, we can handle a few days, even a week, but the thought of having another week off, it disrupts everything,” Ms Askew said.
The Cockatoo centre is one of five council-run relief centres in the area.
The local primary school and childcare centre were also closed for almost a week, leaving Ms Askew unable to work.
“My priority is my boys,” Ms Askew said.
Emergency authorities in Victoria have now confirmed the storm destroyed 37 homes across the state, leaving them uninhabitable.
It’s not the first time the town of Cockatoo has been hit by a major power outage – the last blackout that dragged on for days here was in 2021.
Cardinia Shire Mayor Jack Kowarzik said the increased frequency of weather-related power outages worries him.
“Particularly when you look at the financial impact it has on people; not everyone can afford to restock their cupboards and fridges after something of this magnitude comes through,” he said.
This is the longest power outage Ms Askew has experienced, and while she has generators, with a running cost of about $100 a day, it’s much more expensive than mains power.
Locals that 7.30 spoke to were concerned more isn’t being done to shore up the electricity network to withstand extreme weather events.
Calls for national inquiry
AusNet Services spokesperson Steven Neave apologised to customers for the time it had taken to restore power to the area. He said it was “the biggest weather event we’ve seen in terms of customer impacts”.
AusNet is one of five electricity distribution companies in Victoria and owns wires covering about 80,000 kilometres of the state. The company also owns the state’s transmission towers – six of which were destroyed in the storms last week.
The Victorian government has announced an independent panel will look into the response of power companies to the power outages caused by last week’s storm.
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood said a national inquiry was also needed to ensure Australia’s entire energy transmission and distribution network was future-proof.
“A version of Einstein’s definition of insanity, if you keep doing the same stuff you’re going to get the same result and we’ve seen this already happening in Australia with weather events, so I think the tolerance to accept this is pretty low,” he said.
Mr Wood said it could be time to reconsider the cost of burying power lines underground in more bushfire or severe weather prone environments, despite the massive cost. In 2020, Ausgrid estimated that it would cost about $160 billion based on it costing $2.5 million per kilometre and take 40 years to bury the lines underground in Victoria.
“Once they’re underground, then you don’t have the sort of consequences we’ve seen,” Mr Wood said.
He said the public needed to decide whether they are prepared to pay more in household energy bills for more reliability.
“That requires a pretty substantial review and a very strong commitment to change,” he said of the role of decision-makers.
Decentralising the grid
Business owner Linden Mitchell runs the local pub and pizza shop in Cockatoo and estimates she had lost about $10,000 in earnings in the past week after both her businesses were shut when the electricity went out.
“It just seems to me that there could be a lot of things done to make things easier,” she said.
Ms Mitchell was frustrated by what she saw as a lack of political will to ensure communities like hers can keep the lights on in an extreme weather event.
“Think outside the box,” she said.
“Like for heaven’s sake, have big generators that automatically kick in, give the vulnerable people here a solar panel with batteries, so that we’re not dependent on mains power.
“If they can’t supply it, do something else.”
Mr Wood agreed with Ms Mitchell and said rolling out more renewables and batteries closer to communities was another way to stop wide-scale blackouts and should be an urgent priority.
“At the local level, we can do things as well to make the system more resilient because we’ve got a renewable system with distributed generation rather than big centralised power stations,” Mr Wood said.
“That means if a transmission line is damaged in a storm, and they will be, the extent of that damage will be much less and restricted to a particular area.”
But the cost of ensuring the viability of the electricity network will be extremely costly to the power companies and will need approval from the federal regulator, because those price rises will eventually be passed on to customers.
In the main street of Cockatoo, the economic impact of the power outages last week drags on. Half the businesses were still without power when 7.30 visited.
Some locals say they would be happy to pay more to keep the lights on.
“Our whole income comes from our business, so not only have we not had power at home or at the shop, we’ve had no income the last seven days,” trader Elise Turnedge said.
“I would gladly pay a little bit extra if I had to, to get the infrastructure upgraded.”
However, not everyone in the community was convinced ordinary people should be left to foot the bill.
“Our cost of living is so high anyway, to do that many people would go without and I don’t think that’s acceptable at all,” Carolyn Askew said.
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