19 October 2024
At night keep power tight – in the day, power away
We’re asking customers across Broken Hill and surrounds to minimise power usage between 5.30pm and 10.30pm (ACDT) every night, but during the day, to use power as normal.
Customers living across the Far West of NSW are being asked to minimise electricity usage due to extensive damage to the electricity transmission network due to storms on Wednesday 16 October.
Broken Hill is currently being supplied power through a large diesel generator owned and managed by Transgrid and until electricity infrastructure can be repaired and returned to service, saving electricity can make a big difference for you and your neighbours.
We’re asking you to help us maintain power for the community by switching off non-essential appliances and minimising power usage between 5.30pm and 10.30pm daily, Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT). This includes:
- turning off any non-essential appliances like pool pumps, washing machines and dishwashers
- turn off lights if you aren’t in the room
- minimise cooling use.
While your co-operation with managing the times of peak electricity load is appreciated, it is important that your power use from sunrise to 5.30pm remains the same as normal to avoid an oversupply of rooftop solar generation making it harder to keep the power system operating.
To assist with keeping the power on while restoration work is undertaken, we will also be managing controlled load – or off-peak – electricity, so customers may notice their hot water units heating at times that differ to the normal.
If there isn’t enough power available to meet customer demand, it may become necessary to interrupt power supply to some customers temporarily, to allow access to power on a rotational basis.
Energy saving tips can be found here.
Damage to the transmission network is significant with several transmission towers down south of Broken Hill. At this early stage, repairs to the Transgrid network are estimated to take at least a couple of weeks.
We remind everyone to stay at least 8 metres from fallen power lines and thank you for your patience.