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 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 the water system is disrupted.