Brimbank council is turning the heat on its power distribution providers and is urging them to face the people after recurring power outages.
A heatwave last month caused widespread outages across Brimbank, leaving many without essential services.
Responding to widespread community anger, Cr John Hedditch last week tabled a motion which would have Powercor and Jemena front their customers.
“A number of areas were put out of action during the recent heatwave, but prior to that, parts of West Sunshine had been out of action for up to four days as part of an outage that wasn’t related to the heatwave,” Cr Hedditch said.
“Last time our officers wrote to Powercor and asked advice with what was happening we were told things were going to happen, but what we see is an ongoing set of power outages that go on around Brimbank.”
The council will write to the Essential Services Commissioner, Powercor and Jemena urgently requesting they hold a community forum to explain why the outages are occurring.
“We understand from all the publicity … recently, that it’s not a supply issue, it’s a distribution issue with the infrastructure,” Cr Hedditch said.
“We want to know why these outages are occurring in Brimbank, why they’ve been occurring for so many years and why they impact so many communities so badly.”
Powercor will also be asked to explain its plans to mitigate future outages and to outline its level of investment in local power infrastructure in Brimbank compared to other local government areas.
“When we look at what happened over that last heat event, it was Brimbank, Dandenong and the northern suburbs that copped the brunt of it. Why is that so?” Cr Hedditch.
“It suggests that there’s a level of inequity in this power distribution scheme.”
A spokesperson for Powercor said the company was “happy to meet with them [council] directly to discuss their concerns about reliability of electricity supply in the area”.
