Power outage mystery

Energex still baffled by cause of major blackout

NINE large generators are on standby in Broadbeach while Energex tries to figure out what caused Friday night’s “unprecedented” big blackout.

Energex spokesman Danny Donald said supply was cut to all of the 11,700 customers serviced by the Broadbeach substation when two earthing transformers at the facility failed about 4.30pm on Friday.

“We lost the entire Broad- beach substation. We had a fault on both of the earthing transformers,” he said.

“What caused that fault, we are still unsure. We are investigating that right now.

“Most of our senior engineers have never seen anything like that before. It was completely unprecedented. We’ve launched a full investigation into what caused it.”

The outage saw electricity cut to 3800 homes in Broadbeach and 2000 in Broadbeach Waters, with parts of Bundall, Clear Island Waters, Mermaid Beach and Surfers Paradise also affected.

Commuters and pedestrians diced with death as motorists drove in darkness, trying to cross intersections trams were still running on, and pedestrians struggled to cross the street.

Mr Donald said 19 large generators were brought in to hold the load on Friday while crews worked to restore supply. “Within the hour, crews had 2000 to 3000 users back up and running,” he said.

Crews had to replace two earthing transformers at the substation to rectify the problem. “Power was restored to the last customers at 3am,” Mr Donald said.

Energex has kept nine generators in Broadbeach while it investigates the malfunction in case the problem reoccurs.

Mr Donald said most major outages were caused by trees over power lines or storms.

“They’re usually obvious things,” he said. “This hasn’t been obvious so our engineers are determined to find out what happened.”

Mr Donald ruled out overloading as the cause. He said power consumption was nowhere near the peak loading record set earlier this year.

“We’re in the middle of winter. That’s when the least amount of pressure is on the network. Our peak season is in summer. We experienced record peak loading in February this year.”

Traders and residents lodging insurance claims as a result of the blackout can obtain an outage confirmation notice from Energex.