Restoration
Our restoration plan
Power and Water's Crisis Recovery Manual directs the activities of hundreds of staff in the event of damage to our power stations, the power network, water and sewerage services.
Our plans priorities public and employee safety, protection and restoration of our services.
Local crews in the affected storm or cyclone area are on alert. Crews from outside the area can also be mobilised and brought in to help as needed.
Damage assessment - finding out how severely the electricity and/or water network has been damaged - must be carried out quickly and accurately when the storm has passed.
Field crews are prepared and dispatched immediately after the storm or cyclone's impact to begin the assessment.
Major substations and high voltage powerlines that support large electrical loads to customers are checked first and are restored to service as soon as possible.
This initial assessment helps develop an estimate of field crews required, resources needed and the time estimated to complete restoration.
Our call centre is mobilised to take customer calls about outages, and to help prioritise the recovery effort. In the event of major damage to the Darwin area our call centre will operate from Alice Springs, staffed by our Alice teams.
We work closely with the Department of Health and Community Services to ensure advice is provided to householders if public drinking water is affected or other heath risks are evident. You may be directed to boil water if the water system is disrupted.
Our restoration process
Electricity
Power and Water restores power to its vast network of transmission lines, distribution powerlines, substations, neighbourhood transformers and service wires to individual customers in order of priority.
It's a sequence that is common to the electricity industry in Australia and world-wide.
We focus on restoring power to public health and community facilities first and to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible.
Our first priority is safety of the public as well as our staff working on powerlines.
The typical sequence in the restoration process - many of which occur simultaneously - is as follows:
- Transmission, Substation Equipment and Main Distribution Powerlines
High voltage transmission lines supply power to large numbers of customers and large geographic areas. Distribution substations and powerlines serve a critical linking and switching function on our system. Protecting and repairing damage to these three components is our first priority. - Essential Facilities
These include emergency service and disaster control centres and critical community infrastructure such as hospitals, health care facilities and aged care homes, police, ambulance, fire brigade, cyclone shelters, water treatment facilities and pumping stations. Efforts to restore power to these facilities are a priority to protect the health and safety of the public. - Distribution Powerlines
Our next priority is to restore power to the largest number of customers as quickly as possible. This involves distribution powerlines, distribution transformers and finally service wires to individual homes and businesses. Special needs such as life support are taken into account however, customers need to have contingency plans in place to address their needs in case of a major event as it may take time to restore services. Please also see Getting reconnected.
Water and sewerage services
We focus on restoring water and sewerage to public health and community facilities first and to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible. The public will be notified by public announcement if there are water quality issues and there is a need to boil water.
The restoration process for water and sewerage services includes;
- Checking critical corridors and ensuring water supply is available along those.
- Checking the condition of water and sewerage pumping stations.
- Bringing all water pumping stations on line as quickly as possible.
- Survey teams to report back on damage to infrastructure.
- Installation of mobile generation where required.
- Visual checks for sewerage overflows and clean up if necessary.