Repairing damage and restoring power after two waves of storms

Violent electrical storms late on Wednesday 15 January damaged energy infrastructure and brought down trees and powerlines, before gale-force winds hit on Friday 17 January.

Since Wednesday, the SES has received more than 8,700 call outs, with many incidents involving live power lines. Crews will continue responding to incidents over the next few days.

At the height of Wednesday's storms 226,000 customers lost power, and on Friday, more than 70,000 were disconnected. Some homes and businesses were hit by both weather systems.

While power has been restored to the vast majority thanks to the work of SES volunteers and Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy workers, the severity of the damage has caused some prolonged outages. Some of these jobs have required complete re-builds of parts of the network, which have taken several days to complete. Some are in isolated locations.

Ausgrid is advising customers some outages will continue into early this week. Essential Energy workers are now supporting Ausgrid in its clean up and restoration efforts.

As of 6am Monday 20 January, around 8,600 homes and business across NSW were without power.

• Ausgrid has 8,500 customers without power:
  • 1,500 in Newcastle/Hunter, including 350 in Port Stephens
  • 1,000 Central Coast
  • 6,000 in Sydney

More than 200,000 Ausgrid customers have been impacted by the storms.

• Endeavour Energy has around 100 customers without power in Sydney.
  This is down from a total of 78,000 Endeavour Energy customers impacted by the storms.
• Essential Energy has restored all power outages from the storms.
  A total of 31,500 Essential Energy customers were impacted.

The safety of the community and energy crews is the number one priority as crews work to get the power back on.

Residents are urged to follow these safety measures:

• Always assume a fallen wire is live and dangerous, stay at least 8 metres clear of them.
• Avoid wires that are hanging low, on the ground or tangled in trees and storm debris.
• Never drive across fallen powerlines.
• Report fallen powerlines immediately by calling your electricity distributor:
• If you're using a portable generator for power, avoid deadly exhaust fumes entering your home.
• If you have an emergency, call Triple 0 (000) or the Police Assistance Line on 131 444 for non-urgent matters.

The Australian and NSW Governments have confirmed a Natural Disaster Declaration for select local government areas affected by these storms, and more assessments are underway. Find out more information about the assistance available.

The Minns Labor Government is also waiving the waste levy in many affected local government areas to speed up recovery efforts and reduce the financial burden on households and businesses.

Affected customers should contact their electricity distributor to see if further support is available. For example, Ausgrid customers may be eligible for up to $250 from Ausgrid to cover food spoilage due to power outages.

Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe said:

"It has been a massive task to restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses since these wild storms hit, and we thank the SES volunteers and energy crews who have worked around the clock to make it happen.

"This important but difficult work is still going. There are customers who are still without power, and we know that is incredibly difficult. Crews are working as hard as possible to reconnect everyone."

Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib said:

"The situation is challenging for communities and emergency responders, but we have also seen the best in people and from our incredible emergency response volunteers and personnel.

"The NSW State Emergency Service and other first responders, including Fire and Rescue NSW, the NSW Rural Fire Service and VRA Rescue NSW, have made a mammoth effort to help communities get back on their feet during these difficult times.

"The NSW Government is working with councils and communities to provide support where it is needed, with joint federal and state funding already available for some LGAs and assessments well underway for others."

Related ministerial articles