Tens of thousands of Victorians remain without electricity after storms smashed the state’s power network on Tuesday.
Power to some traffic lights and train lines has still not been restored, which could cause chaos during Wednesday morning’s commute. And overnight, Ambulance Victoria told those unable to call triple-zero to instead drive to their nearest hospital emergency department.
However, outage trackers for Victoria’s electricity distribution businesses showed power was restored to tens of thousands during the night.
About 6.30am on Wednesday, Powercor reported 25,780 customers in Victoria’s west and inner Melbourne were offline (down from 76,125 at 8pm on Tuesday). United Energy, the distributor in south-east Melbourne, reported 24,334 customers without power (down from 134,579 at 8pm). Jemena, the distributor in north-west Melbourne, reported only 70 customers remain affected (down from 189 at 8pm).
The outage tracker of AusNet, which distributes power in Victoria’s east, has crashed due to “overwhelming demand”. A rough calculation of its replacement outage list shows at least 50,000 customers are still without electricity (262,601 had no power at 8pm).
On social media platform X, Metro Trains said buses are replacing trains between Belgrave and Upper Ferntree Gully due to an overhead power supply issue near Upwey. Replacement buses will continue express through to/from Ringwood.
Most other metropolitan train lines have resumed regular service after power outages caused chaos during the evening commute on Tuesday, causing replacement bus services to be overwhelmed at stations such as Caulfield.
The state government has warned it could take weeks to fully restore the network as Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio described it as “one of the largest outage events in the state’s history”.
Source: The Age