Power Outage Update

Ausgrid working to restore power to thousands of customers

16 December 2018: 10PM

Ausgrid customers should prepare for ongoing outages in some parts of the network following severe storms on Saturday night.

At 10pm today 13,000 homes and businesses across Sydney, the Central Coast and the Hunter are still without power – the majority of those customers are in Pennant Hills and Galston.

General Manager Asset Management & Operations, Sam Sofi thanked customers for their patience as Ausgrid crews worked hard to return power to communities.

“We have now restored power to 38,000 customers. When the storms hit Saturday night, more than 50,000 customers on our network experienced outages.

“We understand the customer frustration at extended outages on the network. We know it’s tough to organise families, school and work with no power and we are trying hard to get power back to our customers as soon as possible,” said Mr Sofi.

“Unfortunately, the damage caused by the extreme weather means complex repairs are required and this is taking longer than expected.
“I’d like to thank our customers for their patience as we work to repair about 500 hazards on the network - including things like fallen trees and powerlines, snapped power poles and damage from lightning strikes,” he said.

Sydney’s north has been the hardest hit particularly around the Cherrybrook, Pennant Hills, West Pennant Hills, Beecroft, Thornleigh, Dural, Westleigh, Galston and Castle Hill however suburbs in Sydney’s south also experienced outages.

“Our crews need to repair and rebuild the network in some places to make it safe before we can restore power, that includes installing new power poles and restringing powerlines and unfortunately that takes some time.

“We haven’t seen this extent of damage in these areas in recent times and we’d like to thank our emergency crews who are working hard to get power back safely to everyone”, Mr Sofi said.

Life support customers have been advised to activate their back up plans. Fallen or damaged trees and storm debris can hide fallen wires and if you see fallen powerlines always assume they are live, stay safely back and report them to Ausgrid on 13 13 88.