Power restored after outage left more than 9400 Geraldton customers in the dark

More than 9400 homes and businesses in the Mid West city of Geraldton were without power this afternoon thanks to a substation fault.

According to Western Power, 9,444 customers were affected in Mahomets Flats, Beachlands, Wandina, Geraldton, Wonthella, Rangeway, Tarcoola Beach, Karloo, Mount Tarcoola, West End, Utakarra and Cape Burney.

There were private 17,434 dwellings in Geraldton at the time of the 2021 census, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, meaning the outage has potentially affected more than half the city.

A Western Power spokesperson said initial investigations into the outage had been completed.

“We’ve identified a substation fault as the cause of the power outage.,” the spokesperson said.

“Crews are on site and are working as swiftly and safely as possible to complete repairs and restore power. Our Network Operations team are working with crews to isolate the fault area and shortly commence restoring customers via backfeeding.

“We are communicating with customers directly impacted via SMS with information and updates including estimated restoration times, our response efforts and the cause.

“We thank the community for their understanding as we work to resolve the fault.”

The outage, which began at 2.45pm this afternoon forced some businesses to close their doors.

Power was restored by about 4:57pm.