Dim view of brownouts

By EMMA SUN
YET another resident has come forward with complaints about the power supply and frequent blackouts in the Dandenongs.
The Mail reported The Patch resident Roger Willsher’s concerns about SP AusNet providing unreliable power supplies on 22 May and also similar problems from Cockatoo resident Rob Angus and Selby resident Julie Howard-Whale on 5 June.
But SP AusNet has apologised for the inconvenience and blamed the recent severe storms for the outages.
Mt Dandenong resident Alan Jennings said the constant dropouts, which have been labelled as ‘brownouts’, are slowly killing off all his electrical equipment.
“(The recent) stormy conditions saw us drop out power at least 12 times one night and four times the next night, each time for around a minute or so,” he said.
“There is no electrical equipment that can handle such repeated power surges on an ongoing basis.
“I do have expensive surge protectors in place but they do not stop the repeated stop start functions that occur on nights like these.”
He said he and his neighbours have been forced to replace their modems a couple of months ago due to the dropouts.
He said he was concerned about the potential bushfire risk caused by old cabling and urged SP AusNet to fix the lines as soon as possible
Mr Angus said power outages in his town were also “appalling”, and suffered blackouts despite SP AusNet working on the power pole near his home.
Mr Willsher said he had lost computer data, had to go without heating, had no hot water, and missed television programs due to constant blackouts.
His daughter, who lives in Belgrave, recently returned home from a holiday to find her circuit breaker had tripped in a power interruption, leaving her fridge and freezer contents to thaw. His friends, also Belgrave residents, had a similar experience.
An SP AusNet spokesperson said it is taking measures to prevent more blackouts from occurring, which he believed were caused by severe storms that sent bark and branches falling against the wires.
He said SP AusNet would finish replacing 36 kilometres of open aerial low voltage cable with aerial bundled cable throughout parts of the Dandenongs such as Belgrave South, Selby, The Patch and Cockatoo by next month.
He said SP AusNet has also started a four year program to replace open aerial high voltage cable with aerial bundled cable in towns including Mt Dandenong and Montrose.
“By replacing bare powerlines with insulated aerial bundled cable, SP AusNet is reducing power outages and fires from falling debris and animal interference,” he said.
“Aerial bundled cable has been very successful in reducing the number of fire starts and has been used in areas of high bushfire risk such as the Dandenong Ranges.”