Power slowly being restored in Broken Hill after backup generator fails overnight

Power has been restored to parts of Broken Hill in far-west New South Wales after a major back-up generator failed overnight.

Transcript

00:00Nearly 7 hours on from the power outage that occurred overnight, residents in Broken Hill

00:07and surrounding properties are finally starting to have their power be returned to them.

00:13It has had to be done in segments because of fears around overloading the backup generator

00:18that is supporting the town.

00:20And in a statement to the ABC, TransGrid have told us that the reason the backup generator

00:26was taken offline was because they detected a fault and it was a requirement for all safety

00:31concerns to take it offline at 2.30 in the morning.

00:35We did hear from residents outside of Broken Hill but within the far west at areas like

00:40Wilcannia or Menindee that they had their power taken off last night for around two

00:45hours and then it was eventually brought back again.

00:48But as you can see from ongoing reporting today that it really has been quite a tumultuous

00:5324 hours and really last seven days.

00:56Yeah, so Grace how are residents getting on then?

01:00Look, residents here are quite resourceful.

01:05We've seen, I've heard from business owners who said they've been pouring water into bottles

01:10and freezing them to keep their products in the fridge cool overnight if there was to

01:14be an outage.

01:15People are trying to cook dinners on gas barbecues and the such and lots of people are going

01:20out as well to try and purchase generators for themselves and we've also had FPOS machines

01:27go down which requires sort of that need for cash and we did speak with the local credit

01:32union about this.

01:33We'll hear from them now.

01:35I think the main problem that people are having is that despite the digital platforms and

01:39card payments still working, the telecommunications problem has meant that FPOS has been problematic.

01:46So we have had people in here looking for cash so that they could buy generators.

01:50We have had people from Wilcannia come in to get cash so that they can use that in their

01:55communities.

01:56So just being open has been able to solve that problem for them.

02:00So as you can hear, people are really making the best out of a bad situation.

02:05The latest from TransCrude is that their works on the towers that were knocked out over the

02:11last week during that thunderstorm and even possible tornado, the works on that are on

02:16track and they are still hoping to hit that November 6th deadline of having everyone's

02:21power restored by then.