Western Power finally restore power to northern suburbs after Monday’s spread of pole top fires

Western Power has blamed pole top fires caused by high humidity and rain for leaving some northern suburbs without power for more than 48 hours.

More than 4000 customers in Greenwood, Madeley, Kingsley, Padbury and Duncraig were without power for about a day-and a-half before it was restored on Tuesday afternoon.

About 1300 residents in Tapping, Carramar, Neerabup and Banksia Grove were left without power for up to 54 hours.

Suburbs surrounding Stirling and Balcatta were some of the last remaining areas without power on Wednesday. Just under 1600 customers lost power for two days in Nollamara, Dianella, Balcatta, Yokine, Tuart Hill, Osborne Park and Stirling.

Scarborough and Wanneroo were some of the other areas in Perth’s north without power on Wednesday morning.

Western Power said the widespread power outages across the northern suburbs were a result of high humidity and rain causing various pole top fires.

“Crews have worked as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to all 27,000 customers in the Wanneroo, Joondalup and Stirling areas, including around 110 customers in Balcatta and Stirling who were restored at around 11.30am today,” a spokesperson said on Wednesday.

“The outages in the northern suburbs were the result of widespread power pole damage due to humid weather conditions that moved through the metro areas overnight on Sunday and into Monday morning.

“Pole top fires can occur during light drizzling rain or misty damp conditions when a combination of recent dust and pollution builds up to create paths or ‘tracks’ on the insulators, enabling electricity to jump across.

“This tracking electricity can heat elements of the pole infrastructure to a point where they smoulder and burn.”

Western Power said it had 860,000 poles in its network and was improving the way assets were managed and maintained, which included “de-energised siliconing and washing, insulator replacements, and managing trees and vegetation near wires, and high-pressure cleaning of insulators”.

“While extensive work has been undertaken to minimise the risk of pole top fires across the network to increase resilience, climate change impacts on weather patterns are posing challenges,” the spokesperson said.

Customers who experience an outage for longer than 12 consecutive hours can apply for an extended outages payment of $120.

Residents voiced their frustrations of the damaged power poles and loss of power on local resident pages.

“This is what can happen when there’s dust on the powerlines and we have a little rain. I wish we were on the list to remove our powerlines!”, one resident said in a Craigie community page, along with an image of a damaged power pole.

“It’s ludicrous that we still have power poles! We should have had underground power years ago! Why can’t all the powers that be get this right, we’re so far behind other countries!,” another resident said.