Reviving Resilience: Rebuilding After Back-to-Back Storms

Power has now been reinstated to approximately 300,000 residences, businesses, and other properties that experienced blackouts when intense storms traversed NSW. Energy teams and volunteers from the NSW State Emergency Service are diligently working to restore the remaining 8,600 customers.

Severe electrical storms late on Wednesday, January 15th, inflicted damage on energy infrastructure and caused trees and powerlines to fall, followed by gale-force winds that impacted the area on Friday, January 17th.

Since Wednesday, the SES has responded to over 8,700 emergency calls, with numerous incidents involving live wires. Crews will persist in attending to incidents over the coming days.

During the peak of Wednesday’s storms, 226,000 customers lost electricity, and over 70,000 experienced disconnections on Friday. Some residences and businesses faced disruptions from both weather events.

Although most customers have had power restored due to the efforts of SES volunteers and staff from Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, and Essential Energy, the extent of the destruction has led to some extended outages. Certain repairs necessitate complete rebuilds of parts of the infrastructure, which have taken several days to finalize. Some sites are in remote areas.

Ausgrid is notifying customers that some outages will extend into the early part of this week. Essential Energy personnel are now assisting Ausgrid with clean-up and restoration endeavors.

As of 6 am on Monday, January 20th, approximately 8,600 homes and businesses across NSW remained without power.

• Ausgrid is serving 8,500 customers without electricity:
  • 1,500 in Newcastle/Hunter, including 350 in Port Stephens
  • 1,000 Central Coast
  • 6,000 in Sydney

More than 200,000 Ausgrid customers have been affected by the storms.

• Endeavour Energy has roughly 100 customers without power in Sydney.
  This number has decreased from an initial total of 78,000 Endeavour Energy customers affected by the storms.
• Essential Energy has fully restored all power outages resulting from the storms.
  A total of 31,500 Essential Energy customers were impacted.

The safety of the community and energy personnel remains the top priority as teams strive to restore power.

The Australian and NSW Governments have announced a Natural Disaster Declaration for specific local government areas affected by these storms, with additional assessments in progress.

For details on available support, visit: www.nsw.gov.au/emergency/recovery/natural-disaster-declarations.

The Minns Labor Government is also lifting the waste levy in various impacted local government areas to expedite recovery efforts and alleviate financial pressure on households and businesses.

Customers affected should reach out to their electricity distributor to explore if additional assistance is available. For instance, Ausgrid customers may qualify for up to $250 from Ausgrid to offset food spoilage caused by power outages. Visit Ausgrid for more information.

Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe stated:

“Restoring power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses since these severe storms struck has been an enormous task, and we extend our gratitude to the SES volunteers and energy crews who have worked tirelessly around the clock to achieve this.

“This essential yet challenging work continues. There are still customers without power, and we understand that this is incredibly trying. Crews are exerting every effort to reconnect all customers.”

Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib remarked:

“The circumstances are tough for communities and emergency responders, but we have also witnessed remarkable acts from people and our exceptional emergency response volunteers and personnel.

“The NSW State Emergency Service and other first responders, including Fire and Rescue NSW, the NSW Rural Fire Service, and VRA Rescue NSW, have made a substantial effort to assist communities in recovering during these challenging times.

“The NSW Government is collaborating with councils and communities to provide assistance where needed, with both federal and state funding already accessible for some LGAs, and assessments underway for additional areas.”