Blackout woes continue as Mid West sees second set of outages in four days, maintenance mishap blamed again

The Mid West was hit by its second set of blackouts in a week on Friday last week, when residents in towns including Geraldton, Dongara, Northampton, Mullewa, Carnamah, Morawa and Three Springs woke up with no power. According to Western Power, about 24,000 homes and businesses lost power about 3.30am after another mishap caused by maintenance work. Power was restored progressively during the morning and was full returned at 10.25am. Western Power said the blackout was caused by a power generation issue during essential maintenance, which also happened on Tuesday, March 14 when the first outage of the week hit the region. During maintenance work, for safety purposes and to avoid large scale planned outages, the region’s network is “islanded” — isolated from the main network — and power is supplied by a Synergy gas generator in Mungarra. Western Power said it was technical issues at this Mungarra generator which caused the outage. The corporation said separate feeder lines were used to re-energise Geraldton and surrounds and existing microgrids and battery energy storage systems in locations such as Kalbarri were also used. There are no more plans for substantial maintenance for the near future, Western Power has said. Some traffic lights in Geraldton were shut off during the outage and Telstra said 12 of its base stations and exchanges sites were off air at one stage, while others ran on backup power. The blackout came as the cruise ship Coral Princess arrived in Geraldton, which impacted events prepared for visitors and communication between the ship and the City, according to City of Greater Geraldton Mayor Shane Van Styn. “We’re just lucky it came back when it did,” Mr Van Styn said.