Mid West shires Perenjori, Northampton, Irwin, Coorow and Chapman Valley suffered the most power outages in WA

Western Power has revealed several Mid West shires were the hardest hit by power outages in the State in 2021-22. Perenjori, Northampton, Irwin, Coorow and Chapman Valley were listed in the top 10 local government areas impacted most by power outages in 2021-22, according to a new webpage launched by Western Power. Perenjori had the highest average time without power per customer in WA at 72 hours and 4 minutes, while Northampton had the most interruptions with an average of 21 per customer. The duration of shortages in Perenjori, Northampton and Chapman Valley was down significantly from the year before. The average time without power in Perenjori was down from 397 hours and 5 minutes in 2020-21 but had increased in the rest of the shires listed, most of which were in the South West. Western Power growth executive Ben Stanton said the reliability data website was intended to provide more transparency. “The new webpage provides reliability and mitigation work information for locations that are experiencing outages more frequently, the reasons why and what we are doing to address these issues,” he said. One reason given for frequent outages in regional areas such as the Mid West was long feeder lines were often damaged by storms, high temperatures and winds, which were becoming increasingly common due to climate change. Western Power said it was working to address this vulnerability with solutions such as stand-alone power systems and microgrids. Projects such as interconnecting Northampton and Kalbarri, installing and replacing protection devices throughout the Mid West and enhancements to the Kalbarri microgrid were given as examples of this commitment. Western Power is also seeking to address the impact of bushfires on power networks. Western Power executive manager of asset operations Zane Christmas said more than $16 million had been spent by Western Power on bushfire mitigation in the Mid West, including around $2.5 million on replacing conductors, $10 million on pole replacement and reinforcement, $2 million on insulator replacement and $1.5 million on vegetation management. “We’ve increased insulator replacements and network maintenance to improve power reliability where we can and mitigate pole top fire risk in the region,” he said. “Additionally, we’re continuing fire modelling research to improve our ability to predict periods of risk where weather may affect the network.”