How we restore power

Power outages can happen for a number of reasons including equipment faults, network improvements and emergency maintenance, load shedding and electrical faults at your home or business.

The process we follow

1. A power outage is reported

We rely on customer reports to detect small-scale outages. You can report an outage online or by phone on 13 13 88.

2. Clearing hazards and making safe

Life-threatening hazards such as fallen powerlines or damaged electrical equipment are a danger to the public and need to be made safe before work can begin.

3. Crews assigned

We’ll put together the right team to fix this particular problem.

4. Repairs completed

Once repairs are completed, they need to be safety checked before power can be turned back on.

5. Power restored

How we prioritise our work

During a storm the electricity network can be damaged by high winds, falling trees and flooding. Extreme weather may cause multiple localised outages across the network. After a storm, we work to get everyone’s power back as quickly and safely as possible. We make sure the streets are safe, get power back to hospitals and critical services, and then work to restore as many customers as we can in the shortest amount of time.

1. We make sure the streets are safe

Our first priority is to find and make safe any life-threatening hazards such as fallen powerlines or damaged electrical equipment. When wires or poles have been damaged our emergency service officers attend the site to check for hazards, and organise the type of vehicles and equipment needed to clear debris and make repairs. We may need to coordinate our activities with other emergency services.

2. We restore power to hospitals and critical services

We then restore power to critical community buildings and services such as hospitals, pumping stations and emergency services.

3. We repair high voltage powerlines

If your entire suburb is without power it could mean that high voltage powerlines have been damaged during the storm. Ausgrid repairs these lines first so we can reconnect power to thousands of customers at a time.

4. We fix low voltage powerlines

Our next priority is to repair low voltage powerlines that run along residential streets. Each of these lines can power several hundred customers at once.

5. We check service wires

When most customers have their power back our final priority is damaged service wires. These wires run from low voltage powerlines to individual homes, powering a single customer. If your service wire or your private electricity pole is damaged, please contact a qualified electrician to repair the damage to your equipment. Ausgrid is legally unable to carry out repairs to customer equipment past the connection point, including service wires and private electricity poles.

Report of hazards and power outages are important to us. Outages can be reported online here, or call us on 13 13 88. You can check on power outages on the power outage map.