Update: Bass Coast power back on ahead of schedule

POWER is back on across a wide area of Bass Coast on Saturday night, March 18 after a lengthy outage lasting well over four hours.

According to reports from Wonthaggi, where only a few streets were reporting power outages, the power went off at about 4.15pm this afternoon with some accounts of a loud bang about that time.

Crews arrived at the Korumburra Road substation in Wonthaggi an hour later to start trying to isolate the problem.

Ausnet said the cause of the outage is still under investigation but you’ll often get the power failing on hot days, when everyone has the air conditioners running.

Hardest hit areas locally included Dalyston with 267 customers out, Bass 217, Corinella 749, Woolamai 103, Anderson 33, Coronet Bay 1051 and Kilcunda 418.

Power was also out at Glen Forbes 10, Wonthaggi 3, North Wonthaggi 54, and San Remo 4.

Ausnet response

A spokesperson for Ausnet said it was likely that the "extra sensitive settings" placed on the system on days of Total Fire Ban were the reason for the outage in the Bass Coast area.

"Essentially if something falls across the line or an animal causes a power fluctuation, the system is set to shutdown the affected area out of an abundance of caution to reduce the risk of fire on days of extreme fire danger."

Ausnet said crews had been dispatched to check the likely problem areas and as soon as it is deemed safe to do so, the power will be back on.

They said this was the likely reason for the outage although Ausnet will not know for sure until they identify the source of the problem.