Power Outages Plague Victoria After Storm Hits Region

The Loy Yang A power station’s generator failures after the storm caused blackouts.

Extreme weather in the southeastern state of Victoria left hundreds of thousands of Australians without power during the week of February 12, 2024, leading the state’s energy minister to advocate for increased grid resilience in the face of intensifying climate-driven weather patterns, wrote the Guardian. Over a week later, says the Sydney Morning Herald, over 3,100 Victorians still wait for their power to be restored. 

A violent storm in Victoria brought down the transmission line near the city of Geelong as well as local power poles and wires across the state on February 13, 2024, reported News.com.au. The fallen transmission line took all four generators at Australian Gas Light (AGL) Company’s Loy Yang A power station offline, wrote the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Melbourne news outlet the Age, the Loy Yang A coal-fired power plant, considered the least reliable in the country, provides almost one third of Victoria’s energy. Combined with statewide power line damage, the failure left 530,000 without electricity at the outage peak and resulted in one casualty.

Victoria is well-acquainted with outages. Just one month prior to the Loy Yang A generator failure, a thunderstorm caused a blackout for over 40,000 residents, according to the Guardian. Because many of Victoria’s residents live in remote areas, short power outages frequently occur during weather events and last longer than concentrated urban outages.

Since the storm, crews have attempted to clear the debris and restore power lines. However, the Australian energy market operator stated that the severity of the damage may require “days if not weeks to restore electricity to all,” reported 9News. More than 3,000 homes still lack power and more lack phone or internet access as of February 20, says the Sydney Morning Herald.

Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s energy minister, promised a review of energy preparedness and energy company operations, wrote the Guardian. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Labor government previously called for a review of grid resiliency in 2021 after substantial storm damage. However, Energy Safe Victoria, the state’s independent energy safety regulator, reported “fifty instances where maintenance had not been delivered or reassessed within the timeframe” and “one major safety concern” in their 2023 review of the electric grid. 

The Liberal and National parties are calling the oversight a failure of the Labor government, says the Age. Shadow Minister for Energy, Affordability, and Security David Davis said the two parties are planning to “move to establish a parliamentary inquiry into Victoria’s energy transmission network” to ensure a public and fair review of grid failures.

D’Ambrosio also recommended better preparation of the electricity grid amid “climate change and more frequent and extreme weather events,” reported the Guardian. D’Ambrosio’s concern is echoed globally. A U.S. Department of Energy study cites the growing intensity of weather events, caused in part by climate change, as a key factor in the increasing length of power outages in the United States. 

For many Victorians, these promises fall short. Farmers, small business owners, and other affected civilians are advocating for better grid resilience and more government transparency as homes lack electricity, businesses experience losses, and the government remains vague about investigations, wrote the Australian Financial Review. Calls for grid improvements echo across the state, pressuring the government to deliver in the face of the ongoing power crisis.