Yesterday, the AEMO issued a warning about ‘Widespread abnormal conditions’ in Tasmania, on Saturday 31st August 2024, given the severe weather (wind and rain etc) occurring in the south.
One of our team members circulated internally the TasNetworks network outage map, and I thought it was worth sharing the current snapshot externally as a record of the challenging times facing Tasmanians (particularly those in the north):
The ABC News site looks like the following, currently, with plenty of focus on Tasmania … including the article ‘Wild weather in Tasmania knocks out phone coverage, power, as BOM forecasts more rain and wind to come’ … noting:
‘The prolonged extreme weather event affecting Tasmania has left around 30,000 people without power, with residents in a one community being told they should prepare to leave due to a flood risk.’
Given the population of Tasmania was ~571,200 at 31st March 2022, that’s more than 5% of the population without power.
It has been an incredibly rough five days in Tas. Never seen or experienced anything like it. The greater Launceston / central north has been decimated. Saturday night saw at least one transformer explode in Launceston. Sunday night has been the worst by a long shot. We live beside a main feeder in the country which managed to ride through many dips in voltage as the Hadspen substation was managing other feeders from the distribution connection point that were going to ground. In the end, despite an apparent re-close attempt, the main feeder that passes us finally failed. Just to finish things off, 45 mins later, lightning struck the dead feeder just near us, generating a current rush to ground via the surge protection on the transformer causing the HV fuses to drop. Current then found its way into our house via the in ground phone line (yes, land lines are still a thing!), then back to ground via our network and local earth stake! We are the sole customer on this trannie and don’t expect power to be restored for a week. As of 0230 this morning, TasNetworks call taker said they now have 42 000 customers powerless. Would be interesting to see how much our frequency fluctuated down here given all the chaos that has ensued tonight.