Central Highlands businesses and residents frustrated with continuing blackouts

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.

"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."

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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.

"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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The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Trentham is one of many businesses throughout the affected area that has had its trade affected by the intermittent blackouts.

Manager Fiona Miovich said the pub would experience sometimes three or four outages in a night, with the sudden darkness affecting everything from service to cleaning.

"It is a big impact for the town residents, but also for businesses that are trying to run on those nights when it's been such a difficult last two years for everyone and we're just gaining traction now," she said.

"It means that, obviously, we can't stay open. It means that sometimes it's in the middle of service, so people have been seated, they've ordered drinks, they have drinks in front of them but then we can't do food.

"If we are lucky enough that the power outage is after service or after the kitchen is closed, we are losing money from people not sitting on and having another drink because we can't stay open safely with just safety lights on."

The business also has to continue to pay staff while the business is unable to operate, but also has to ask staff to come in earlier the next day to take care of tasks, such as washing dishes and mopping, that cannot be completed in the dark, costing even more money in wages.

Ms Miovich said there had even been times where tills and point of sale systems had failed, forcing the business to take details of customers and rely on their honesty, not always successfully.

"When they go to pay, even the credit card offline, which we're used to be able to rely, we're getting no power from that either, so then we're taking phone numbers trying to write down bills so that we can call them the next day," she said.

"Unfortunately, not everybody is as wonderful as the majority of our customers so people that we don't know as well will not answer that call.

"I can tell you right now that I have tried to call back six tables that have all ranged between $100 to sometimes $300 bill and not had calls returned, so we've served them and they've eaten and they've left and it's just pretty bad form."

Ms Miovich said the community's frustration with the situation was occasionally spreading to the business.

"Then we also have people that get frustrated with us because they've lost power, they want to eat, so they come to the pub, kind of with the understanding that we might be able to do something," she said.

"Even if we have got the wood fired pizza oven going, we can't serve people in the restaurant because it's a health and safety issue. We've got safety lights that go on everywhere but it's not enough, if someone falls over we'd be in deep trouble.

"It pushes us towards looking at generators but something to power a business of this size, we're looking at around, from what we've researched, a $50,000 generator, just to have sitting there. Then if we did have a generator, we would have the whole town there and would that be enough?"

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