RESIDENTS in rural areas around Ballarat may experience more and longer blackouts over the summer under a new bushfire prevention strategy introduced by the Victorian Government.
Circuit breakers in some rural areas will require a visiting crew to restore power, with automatic switch-on disabled for the fire season.
“If a fault does occur on a power line it may take longer than usual for power to be restored as a field crew will need to attend, investigate the outage and reset the circuit breaker on every occasion,” a government spokesman said.
“The changes will mean that, when the circuit breaker trips, usually because there is contact with the power line from things like animals or airborne vegetation, it will not attempt to restore power automatically as it usually would.
“This will reduce the risk of powerlines starting fires from arcing or heating of combustible material.”
The spokesman said automatic circuit breaker restorers on single wire earth return powerlines would be turned off for as long as the fire season lasts.
A Powercor spokesman said the move would affect some rural properties, mainly to the west and north of Ballarat.
The spokesman said a small percentage, probably less than 1000 of the company’s 700,000 Victorian customers, would be impacted.
Energy Safe Victoria director Paul Fearon said the move was part of a range of actions to improve powerline safety in the lead-up to and during the peak fire period.
Mr Fearon said the move was the result of recommendations of the Bushfires Royal Commission.
Email a friend