Tens of thousands of Victorian homes affected by widespread power outages

Photo: Powercor

The State’s Energy Minister has defended Victoria’s power supply as thousands of households were left in the dark overnight – sweltering with no electricity and no cooling.

More than 60,000 homes and businesses covered by City Power, Power Corp, United Energy and AusNet Services have been without electricity during the night.

United Energy’s website crashed with a ‘Sorry’ message displayed for much of the night.

Sarah Ward from AusNet Services said this morning about 1500 AusNet customers were without power.

“We’ve been able to reduce that from around 9000 yesterday,” she said.

Click PLAY to hear the interview on 3AW Breakfast

The State Opposition took the opportunity to blame the outages on the Hazlewood shutdown.

Minister Lily D’Ambrosio has used Twitter to defend the system.

She says the outages had nothing to do with insufficient supply and that breakdowns in equipment owned by private power distribution companies are to blame.

She says anyone claiming it’s a supply issue is “profoundly misinformed”.

Will certainly be a big talking point tomorrow.

Thousands of Victorians (50,000+ based on numbers from United Energy, Powercor and Citipower) are or have been without power tonight, with Melbourne’s west and SE particularly affected.

It’s still 35°. https://t.co/QWkpNXYRgk

— 3AW Melbourne (@3AW693) January 28, 2018

Anyone claiming this was a supply issue is profoundly misinformed. 3/3

— Lily D’Ambrosio MP (@LilyDAmbrosioMP) January 28, 2018

There were, however, some breakdowns in equipment owned by private power distribution companies. I expect the power companies to fix those faults immediately. 2/3

— Lily D’Ambrosio MP (@LilyDAmbrosioMP) January 28, 2018