The cause of repeated electrical faults throughout the Central Highlands has been narrowed down to a particular stretch of powerline, but has yet to be resolved.
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Central Highlands and Macedon Ranges communities have been suffering from regular unplanned blackouts through the start of the year with residents of Trentham, Blackwood, Tylden and surrounding areas experiencing seven unplanned outages since February 23, including one last night.
In a statement released on Tuesday morning, electricity distributor Powercor said it was using advanced technology to identify the cause.
Crews have patrolled the majority of more than 260 kilometres of powerline, with the location of the fault narrowed down to a 20-kilometre area between Blackwood and Trentham.
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"Powercor crews are using enhanced image technology to identify faults which may not be visible to the naked eye, with the technology able to pick up signs of minor equipment damage that can lead to faults," the statement said.
"Drones fitted with high-resolution cameras are also being used this week to help survey parts of the network from the air, while fault detection technology is being installed between Blackwood and Trentham in coming days to help network controllers narrow-down future fault locations and get customers back on supply sooner."
Meanwhile, Powercor has also temporarily transferred supply for more than 500 customers in the area to a different part of the network.
Powercor said any issues detected either through the enhanced image scans, drone inspections or foot and vehicle patrols would be immediately addressed.
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"Powercor is doing everything it can to address the reliability issues being experienced by customers in this area," the statement said.
"In the long term, the reliability of our networks is supported by an extensive, annual program of asset inspection, maintenance and augmentation as well as vegetation management.
"Increasingly, how we plan and design our networks to be reliable well into the future is being influenced by the need to be resilient to hotter summers, more erratic weather conditions and longer bushfire seasons which are now more common in our environment.
"We will be updating customers as we make further progress on this work."
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