The $11.5 million upgrade to Kununurra’s back up power station is almost complete. Very soon, customers in and around Kununurra can expect the duration of outage that affect the whole town to reduce from the familiar three quarters of an hour down to less than a few minutes.
However, before this can become reality, the new system must be tested.
In order to do this, Horizon Power has scheduled three planned power interruptions to take place in the early hours of Friday the 16th, Sunday the 18th and Tuesday 20th of September. At 3.00 am on these three dates, Horizon Power will turn off power to the whole town and test the capability of the system to bring everyone back online under the new, fully automated system.
Ideally, customers will notice very little and power will be restored in as little as a couple of minutes. However, as this process is all about testing the new system, there may be some issues for the technicians to iron out. If this is the case, customers may be without power for up to one hour.
“While we appreciate the inconvenience this may cause to our customers, it is critical that robust testing takes place to ensure the system is operating correctly prior to commissioning.
“Once operating, the new automated back-up power station will make a considerable difference to Kununurra’s reliability which we know has been unacceptable for some time. While little can be done about the frequency of outages, particularly hose caused by lightning, we can reduce the length of time that the community is without power which we expect will provide significant benefit to retail customers in particular,” said Retail and Community Manager Roanna Edwards.
Horizon Power recommends all customers, in particular business customers, turn off all electronic and IT equipment where possible ahead of these planned outages.
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For more information on these outages please contact Retail and Community Manager Roanna Edwards on 9166 4700.