Opposition call for more detail on Mid West blackouts following Energy Minister’s apology

Energy Minister Bill Johnston has apologised for two widespread Mid West power blackouts this month, while the Opposition is calling on the government to release more details and upgrade the region’s infrastructure. Two blackouts impacting around 24,000 homes and businesses in towns including Geraldton, Dongara, Northampton and Mullewa, occurred on March 14 and 17. In State Parliament on Thursday, State Liberal MLC Steve Martin asked the Government why the blackout on March 14 happened. Parliamentary Secretary Matthew Swinbourn, on behalf of Mr Johnston, said the blackout occurred when a protection device at Walkaway tripped, causing power generators at Mungarra to trip and fail, all while the regional system was “islanded”, cut off from the main system for maintenance work. Mr Swinbourn also said the Mungarra generators were currently functional and the system was currently islanded, with planned maintenance work expected to be completed by the end of the week. Mr Martin said the explanation still left him wanting more information. “What caused the protection device at Walkaway to trip at 4.50am? And why did this cause the Mungarra generators to become unstable and trip?” he said. “The residents and businesses of the Midwest need an assurance from the Minister that their power supply is reliable and so far they haven’t got that guarantee.” It comes after Mr Johnston apologised for the blackouts and said the first outage was caused by an issue with a privately owned wind farm. “I know that this is of no benefit to the community because they still suffered from the outage but I think it’s important for people to understand that it did not relate to anything under the control of Western Power or Synergy,” he said. Mr Johnston said the Australian Energy Market sent an instruction to the privately owned wind farm to restart, even though it was not connected to the broader grid, which caused an “over-power situation”. This required the power station to shutdown to avoid “electrocutions and other problems”. Opposition Leader Shane Love also discussed the blackouts in Parliament, calling on the Government to invest more in the region’s energy infrastructure. “It is time to give the people of the Mid West the power they paid for, and with the new budget coming, it is time to invest in new transmission lines, microgrids and more local generation?” he asked.