Ausgrid gets ready for extreme heat and shares tips to help customers prepare at home

Ausgrid’s Chief Safety Officer Matthew Sweeting highlighted the simple steps customers can take to prepare ahead of weather events like heatwaves

“Taking the time to store water bottles in your freezer to ensure you have cool drinking water, and making sure you know how to operate electric garage doors, gates and water pumps manually is key to preparing your home. Where we see consecutive days of extreme heat, this can put added pressure on the grid and so the risk of an unplanned outage can increase. The best time to get ready is now, while the power is on.”

- Matthew Sweeting, Chief Safety Officer

To prepare for an unexpected power outage:

• Keep phones, laptops and power banks charged, especially if you see extreme weather warnings for your area.
• Ensure your Power banks or portable battery packs are fully charged.
• Put together a home emergency kit with items like medication, torches and a portable radio.
   

Ausgrid has postponed some non-essential work across Sydney and Hunter regions tomorrow with warnings issued from the Bureau of Meteorology of extreme heat. Planned works scheduled for Saturday will be reviewed tomorrow.

Work has been cancelled in Regents Park and Luskintyre with temperatures in some parts of the network expected to soar to over 40 degrees.

Matthew Sweeting explained that in making the decision to cancel jobs, Ausgrid considers the safety of both customers and crews, the nature of the work and the number of customers affected.

““During these periods of extreme weather, the safety of our customers and employees remains our priority,” he said. "Proactively reviewing and postponing certain work is an essential part of our extreme weather response - allowing our operations team to ensure our emergency crews are ready to respond to any unplanned outages as quickly as possible. Ausgrid has emergency crews on standby ready to respond to any power outages that occur across the network.”

- Matthew Sweeting, Chief Safety Officer

Ausgrid will continue to review all its planned work which requires power to be interrupted to customers.

Ausgrid customers can opt in for text message notifications to get up-to-date information about all work in their area or they can contact Ausgrid directly on 13 13 65.