Western Power apologises for continued blackouts as Perth swelters

Taylor RenoufThe West Australian
Camera IconWestern Power crews are still working to restore power across Perth. Credit: Bill Hatto/WA News

Thousands of homes across Perth are still without power more than a day after blackouts swept the city amid sweltering hot temperatures, with Western Power blaming debris and bird strikes for the outages.

As of noon Thursday more than 1300 homes remain affected with temperatures expected to reach 36C.

Western Power restored electricity to around 18,000 homes in the metro area on Wednesday night after temperatures reached 40C however, some suburbs are still experiencing blackouts.

Inglewood, Mount Lawley and Duncraig continue to be among the worst affected suburbs, with a new outage in Armadale affecting more than 3000 homes on Thursday morning adding to the woes.

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Western Power executive manager asset operations Sam Barbaro told Gareth Parker on 6PR there were a number of faults that contributed to the blackouts, describing it as “the perfect storm”.

“We had easterly winds that were blowing debris into the power lines, we had a couple of strikes from birds and then the hot weather,” Mr Barbaro said.

“The first few hot days unfortunately, when the network gets put under stress, some of those latent faults that have just been sitting there through the winter months sometimes rear their ugly heads.”

Mr Barbaro said the high bushfire risk in place yesterday also contributed to the longer outages as Western Power protocols require technicians not to reenergise until the weather cools.

Crews were dispatched Thursday morning to the suburbs still affected and power is expected to be restored to the majority of the metro area by 4pm Thursday.

Western Power customers affected by an unplanned outage lasting longer than 12 hours can make a claim for a one-off payment of $80.

Mr Barbaro apologised to customers and said while there is always a risk of an interruption to their services, he was hopeful it would not happen again.

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