At least 285,500 homes, businesses without power after Loy Yang A coal-fired plant goes offline in wild Victoria storm
Hundreds of thousands of Victorian residents remain without power after a wild storm brought hail the size of golf balls and destructive winds of up to 120km/h on Tuesday, sending the state's largest power generator offline which wreaked havoc across parts of the state.
Hundreds of thousands of Victorians could be without power for "days if not weeks" after the state's largest coal-fired power generator suffered a major outage.
Parts of regional Victoria and Melbourne on Tuesday copped heavy rain, destructive winds of up to 120km/h and hail the size of golf balls, which brought down power lines.
The Loy Yang A Power Station then suddenly went offline about 2pm, with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) saying the outage came due to the collapse of six transmission towers from the wild weather event.
Energy crews spent much of the night and into Wednesday morning working to repair some of the hundreds of downed power lines and critical infrastructure.
As of Tuesday night, there were still 473,000 homes and business without electricity. But that number has been revised down to 285,500 due to the hard work of crews.
AusNet Services (Melbourne's outer east and outer north and east and north-east Victoria), CitiPower (Melbourne CBD and inner suburbs), Jemena (north-west Melbourne), Powercor Australia (outer west Melbourne, central and western Victoria and United Energy (south-east Melbourne and Mornington Peninsula) customers are affected.
AEMO has warned residents in impacted areas could be waiting for "days if not weeks" for power to be restored due to the widespread storm damage.
"Vegetation clearing and repairs to damaged powerlines and poles continue. However, given the extent of the widespread damage, it may take days if not weeks to restore electricity to all of those impacted," a statement from 7:30am on Wednesday read.
"Emergency crews continue to endure challenging conditions to access and repair damaged powerlines and critical energy infrastructure."
Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, 90,000 homes and businesses had their power switched off "as a last resort" to ease the pressure on Loy Yang A.
The state began to undergo load shedding – an event where power is deliberately to protect the system –in an attempt to minimise the impact of the outage.
The power station has since been reconnected.
In a further blow, the wholesale of electricity in Victoria shot up to its maximum of $16,600 per megawatt, compared to about $60 in Queensland.
Households which take the wholesale price had to turn their own power off to avoid being charged substantially higher for electricity.
The State Emergency Service said it had received about 2,700 calls for assistance.
AEMO said it will investigate the outage and the power system security in Victoria, which came during intense heat rising to 41C which quickly dropped to 26C.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/at-least-280000-homes-remain-without-power-after-loy-yang-a-coalfired-plant-goes-offline-during-wild-victoria-storm/news-story/6e137f742699aab9b16544e2dd8370b9
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/at-least-280000-homes-remain-without-power-after-loy-yang-a-coalfired-plant-goes-offline-during-wild-victoria-storm/news-story/6e137f742699aab9b16544e2dd8370b9