Coronavirus crisis: Western Power to proceed with planned maintenance despite more people working from home

About 1300 homes will continue to be affected by planned power outages each day, with Western Power refusing to change its maintenance schedule despite more people working from home due to coronavirus.

About 200 customers in the north-eastern suburb of Midvale are expected to be in the dark between 8am and 4pm on Friday, with a scheduled power outage in the area around Farrell Rd.

A spokesman for the West Australian government-owned utility said it was important to push ahead with its planned work program to avoid unplanned outages in the future that could affect large numbers of homes.

But the work is expected to spark anger from affected customers, many of whom will not be able to work remotely.

“Our work practices mean that not all of our planned work requires an outage to complete safely,” the Western Power spokesman said.

“Around 50 per cent, or half, of all planned work is completed without disrupting power to homes and businesses.”

“Each day, on average, there are 1,300 customer connections affected by planned outages out of the more than 1.2 million connections that we have.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, planned outages cause minimal impact to the day-to-day lives of homes and businesses, and our customers are advised in advance of when and where an outage may affect them.”

The spokesman also said the company has a COVID-19 Management Planin place “to ensure staffing levels across the business continue to support critical activities during any period of prolonged disruption”.

Western Power notifies customers 10 days before a planned outage by email, SMS or mail.

Scheduled maintenance is also posted on the utility’s website.