00:00In Moonta, the costs of the outage are already adding up for businesses.
00:06I just looked at the fridges then and just went, oh my gosh, all of that's got to go.
00:10A few customers take nearly a thousand litres of diesel just between two people, so you've
00:15lost that.
00:16Like, that's a morning trade that you're open for.
00:19Wendy Schultz's cafe in Balaclava couldn't open for trade because of the power outage.
00:23It means my staff have no work today, so they'll have no pay, and I'm really concerned about
00:29the wastage of food that will happen.
00:31Without power, local pharmacies in the town couldn't dispense prescriptions.
00:35We can do just cash sales of shop items, but yes, basically a lot of people come in from
00:41out of town, so they are looking to get their scripts straight away and can't.
00:47Provider Electronet says the outage is due to damage at the Hummocks substation near
00:51Port Wakefield, caused by a build-up of dust and salt from dry conditions.
00:56Work underway at the station, where the company says there was more damage than it originally
01:00thought that has delayed power restoration.
01:03The state's energy minister frustrated, but says he's been assured that Electronet is
01:07working hard to fix it.
01:0927,000 people without power is not acceptable.
01:14It's hot today, it's going to be hotter on the weekend.
01:17Energy is an essential service.
01:19This needs to be fixed as quickly as possible.
01:21I am assured by Electronet that power will be restored today.
01:25Power distributor SA Power Network says it expects services to be restored this evening,
01:30but that additional, smaller faults on its local network may arise.
01:33But on the York Peninsula, Wendy says they've been struggling with unreliable power for
01:38two to three weeks.
01:39Yeah, it's just a difficult day of hanging about, waiting to see what will happen.
01:44The community demanding more reliable power and better communication, as the heat hits
01:48again tomorrow.
01:55For more UN videos visit www.un.org
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