22 Sep 2022
Yesterday, the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory published a report on the Inquiry into West Belconnen supercell thunderstorm. We are reading the report and will consider its recommendations.
Evoenergy is highly experienced in managing emergencies and unplanned outages. We have trained and prepared crews ready to respond. However, we can always learn from events like these, and we know we can always be doing more to serve the community.
We know there are opportunities to improve the way Evoenergy responds during storm events in the future, including providing more timely, frequent and effective communications to our customers.
As part of our internal review into our storm response, we sent a survey to residents in West Belconnen who experienced an outage for more than 48 hours.
We heard valuable feedback on how we can improve and work with residents when the power is off. Residents impacted by the storm told us they want to be notified via SMS when we detect a power interruption within our network. As a result, we’re upgrading our systems to introduce SMS notifications for unplanned outages to ensure Canberrans have the latest information about the power supply at their property.
We are committed to reviewing and improving how we respond to storms. This includes ensuring we’re aligned with other agencies in our approach to prioritise public safety before restoring power supply.
A key action identified in our post storm review was to evaluate the accreditation requirements for the ACT Emergency Services to allow them to work near our network safely during storms. This work is currently underway.
We welcome inquiries like this to ensure we are reflecting on how we can all better support the Canberra community.
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