Restoration
Our restoration plan
Power and Water’s Crisis Recovery Manual directs the activities of hundreds of our staff and spells out clearly the preparations and procedures to be followed, depending on the extent of damage to our power stations, the power network, water and sewerage services.
Our plans emphasise public and employee safety and protection and restoration of our services.
Local crews in the affected storm or cyclone area are on alert. If necessary, crews from outside the area can also be mobilised and brought in to assist with the restoration effort.
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 in advance 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 assist to 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 in the event the public drinking water is affected or other heath risks are evident. A boil water alert may result 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.
When restoring power, safety of the public as well as our staff working on powerlines is our top priority.
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 to large geographic areas. Distribution substations and distribution 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
Essential facilities in our communities 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 and essential 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, which connect to individual locations such as powerlines in local streets. Repairs are then made to distribution transformers and finally service wires to individual homes and businesses. Special needs such as life support are also taken into account however, customers need to have contingency plans in place to address their needs in the event 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 of critical corridors and ensuring water supply is available along those corridors.
- 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 generating where required.
- Visual checks for sewerage overflows and clean up if necessary.