00:00On WA's south coast, a popular tourist town with the perennial power problem.
00:07So we have outages quite regularly and quite often, anywhere from a 10 second outage to
00:13a one hour or even more on a regular basis.
00:17Bremer Bay has a population of about 500 people. That grows to thousands when tourists
00:22flock to the pristine coastline.
00:23It puts a strain on resources, a strain on the power and therefore there's not enough
00:28to go around.
00:29With the cost to businesses stretching into thousands of dollars.
00:32We lost thousands here at the store simply because they couldn't buy what they wanted
00:36and on top of that, the tourists can't get their milk and their bread and enjoy their holidays.
00:41We had to close for an entire night on the 27th of December. That's our peak time.
00:47So basically, you know, that's $30,000.
00:50In April, the town was hit with half a dozen blackouts in 10 days.
00:53In response, a Western Power worker advised residents to buy a generator.
00:57The electricity bills to run this business are over $65,000 a year.
01:01It will be $30,000 to get a smallish size generator.
01:05Businesses left feeling as though they don't have any other option.
01:08The owners just forked out $30,000 for a new generator, which won't be reimbursed in any way.
01:14A cost likely to be passed on to locals and visitors alike.
01:17Western Power didn't respond to reports that advised businesses to purchase their own generators, but said it understood residents' frustrations and was exploring solutions to improve reliability.
01:26But businesses want more action.
01:28They send the odd letter saying that there's a power outage and then even the last one where they didn't even turn up.
01:35I think Western Power needs to acknowledge the problem, stop putting it on the back burner and propose some kind of solution.
01:42A holiday hotspot looking for help to ensure it can continue to welcome visitors.
01:46Miss a family as well.
02:04It's awfully able to make a synchronous connection and it does look like a Tuesday.
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