Power surge sparks fly

TasNetworks feels heat over residents’ fried appliances

MIDWAY Point resident Lynn Banks has slammed power utility TasNetworks for trying to weasel its way out of compensation for a power surge that has potentially costed her thousands of dollars.

The Singapore St resident said the power went out at 7pm on Sunday night due to a power surge and returned about 1pm yesterday, affecting about 128 properties.

She has been told the cause was 400 volts travelling through a nearby transformer, rather than the usual current of 240 volts.

The surge destroyed her fridge, heat pump, TV, DVD player and various appliances.

All up she estimated thousands of dollars in damage by replacing the items, repair bills as well as lost food and wages and a potential excess on an insurance claim.

Ms Banks said TasNetworks had requested claims for damaged electrical items as well as reports from a refrigeration mechanic, an electrician and a TV repairer for the purposes of compensation.

“[TasNetworks] said ‘we won’t know until [today] whether we’re going to accept any claims of compensation’ because they were doing an investigation to find out what caused it,” she said.

“And if something caused it like an animal or nature, they don’t have to pay any money.

“[They] said people [could] have to claim on their house insurance.

“Instead of focusing on an investigation on how to get out of it, they should focus on the fact that people don’t have easy access to funds to get people in and do reports.”

Fellow Singapore St resi- dents Veronica and David, who wanted their surnames omitted, said the power surge destroyed their Foxtel box, cut off their internet and landline NBN service and fried their Aurora Energy plug-in fault alarm Cable PI.

They also had an electrician bill well into the hundreds of dollars for the replacement of destroyed power points and a surge protection device, as well as losing $100 worth of food.

“The Foxtel box could have caused a fire because of the smoke coming out of it,” Veronica said. “The whole place could have gone up and that was frightening. We have no information from them [TasNetworks].”

David also said their power meter wasn’t working. He criticised a TasNetworks worker who said the utility would do an estimate on power used.

A TasNetworks spokesman said it was still investigating the cause of the outage and that customers who believed they were eligible for compensation needed to file a claim form.

“We are aiming to conclude the investigation in to the outage by the end of this week and we will respond to each claim within five business days following this,” he said.

TasNetworks also encouraged the installation of surge protection devices to prevent similar incidents.

Claim forms can be found at www.tasnetworks.com.au.